Book Review: "Beneath the Surface" by Kaira Rouda

Rich people behaving badly and family dysfunction are always signs of an entertaining read. When I saw that a second book in this series was recently published, I figured I’d pick up the first.

Richard is the billionaire CEO of his family company. As he has been getting older, both of his sons are wondering what Richard’s plans are for the company’s future. So when each gets an invitation to join Richard and his fifth wife, Serena, on his new yacht for a weekend trip to Catalina Island, each thinks that Richard is ready to name them his successor.

When both Ted and John arrive at the yacht with their wives, they’re less than pleased to discover that the other has been invited. So now the challenge is for each brother to outmaneuver the other and prove to their father that they’re worthy to run the company.

No one can count on the tricks and surprises Richard has up his sleeve, or just how rough the water is during the trip. And when his estranged daughter Sibley arrives, she wreaks havoc in different ways.

This is one of those books where everyone has secrets, everyone has grudges against others, and even the wives want a piece of the pie. Who will walk away with what they want? And what does Richard have in store for his family?

There isn’t a likable character in the bunch, so I wasn’t rooting for anyone. The twists come fast and furious—some were surprising and some were predictable—but it was a quick and entertaining read, and I’ll be interested to see what Rouda does in the sequel.

Book Review: "Reckless Girls" by Rachel Hawkins

Rachel Hawkins' latest thriller, Reckless Girls, centers around a pleasure trip to a legendary deserted island…what could go wrong?

When Lux met Nico, her life was in a weird place, so she was all too happy to leave San Diego with him when he sailed to Maui. And while she doesn’t quite feel like she’s found her groove, she still likes being with him and enjoys her surroundings.

When Nico is approached by two young women who ask him to sail them to Meroe Island, a deserted island in the Pacific with a creepy history (shipwrecks, cannibalism, murder), it sounds like an interesting adventure, but he’ll only agree if Lux comes with them. The money is good and it’s only a short trip, so why not?

They arrive they find an island of true beauty, but they’re not the only ones there. And although the quartet quickly bond with the two other people they meet on the island, many of them are hiding secrets of some kind. But while tensions rise occasionally, it’s not until another unexpected visitor to the island arrives that things start to fall apart—in dangerous ways.

I’ve been waiting to get my hands on Reckless Girls so I definitely picked it in my Book of the Month box. It definitely didn’t disappoint—I found it twisty and sexy and exciting. I really liked Rachel Hawkins’ last book, The Wife Upstairs, and I just really enjoy the way she writes.

The book shifts between past and present—Lux narrates all the present chapters but the past chapters set up the other characters. It was fast-moving and just so good!

Book Review: "Float Plan" by Trish Doller

Float Plan, Trish Doller's adult fiction debut, is a poignant and romantic story about finding the strength to pick yourself up after tragedy.

Anna had planned for a life with her fiancé, Ben. She was completely rocked by his death, and has been consumed by grief for the last 10 months. But when she gets a reminder about the trip they had planned, to sail from Florida to the Bahamas, she decides to make the trip alone, in their sailboat, much to the worry of friends and family.

Anna has never sailed without Ben but she feels this is the release—and the relief—she needs. After a few close calls and one treacherous night of sailing, she realizes she needs a co-captain. She hires Keane, a professional sailor, who has been trying to rebuild his life after a tragedy of his own.

Close quarters, emotionally vulnerable people, beautiful scenery, and a touch of adversity—aren’t those the ingredients for a perfect romance? But this isn’t an insta-love story. It’s a compelling, emotional look at how you find the strength to move on when there’s still part of you that doesn’t want to, and how it’s still okay to grieve what you’ve lost. And it's also a book about realizing you still can be happy if your life doesn't turn out how you planned it to be.

Float Plan really was a beautiful book. These characters were so appealing and so complex, I was definitely rooting for them. And I so appreciated that there wasn’t any real melodrama, which I totally expected given the plot. (Do you ever find yourself waiting for something bad to happen in a book or movie?)

This was just so good!

Book Review: "Don't Date Rosa Santos" by Nina Moreno"

"We try with all we have. We fight hands we can't see. We stomp against the earth and whisper all the right prayers, but sometimes it isn't meant to be. You believe life will always be as it is, and you make plans, but the next thing you know, you're climbing into a sinking boat in the dead of night because the land you love is no longer safe. The sun sets, he doesn't swim above the water again, and time runs out."

Rosa Santos has been raised to believe that the women in her family are cursed by the sea, especially when it comes to love, and the men who get involved with them are doomed. When her grandparents migrated from Cuba when her mother was just an infant, storms hit their boat, and only Rosa's grandmother and mother survived. Eighteen years later, the young man her mother loved (and Rosa's father) left on his boat for a routine day of work and never returned.

Since then Rosa has been afraid of even going near the water—and has steered clear of relationships. She lives with her grandmother, Mimi, in a small Florida town where everyone knows everyone's business. Mimi works as a curandera, the person everyone turns to for help with illness, crises, and everything in between. Rosa's mother drifts in and out of town, unable to stay for too long in the place where her heart was broken, and causing friction with Mimi whenever she returns.

What Rosa wants more than anything is answers. She wants to know more about what Cuba was like for her grandmother, why she'll never speak of that time or of the family left behind. She wants to understand why her mother can't stay in one place, why she can't be the mother she's always needed. And more than anything, she wants to understand the whole idea of the Santos "curse," especially when she meets Alex Aquino, the brooding sailor with tattoos of the ocean and a passion for baking.

How do you get a fresh start when everyone around you knows everything about you, and is watching your every move? Can we really overcome the challenges of our past, and outrun the "curses"? Is love worth risking everything for, especially the potential that you could "doom" someone else?

Don't Date Rosa Santos is an utterly charming, sweet book about family, love, grief, and heritage, and is, in many ways, a love letter both to Cuba and to small-town America. The characters are fun and complex, and even if there aren't too many surprises to be had in the book, I got hooked pretty quickly and read the entire book in one day.

Nina Moreno has created a magical place, and her characters are quirky and memorable. It does feel a little like Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, and the relationships between mothers and daughters are special. (Plus, Alex sounded hot.) This was a fun read without a tremendous amount of angst, which was a nice change of pace for me!

NetGalley and Disney-Hyperion provided me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

Book Review: "Before the Wind" by Jim Lynch

"Families split over money, betrayal and abuse, over resentments, infidelities and misunderstandings, over people being jackasses. Most anything can rattle the fault lines. Yet I know of only one family torn asunder by a sailboat race."

Joshua Johannssen has sailing in his blood. It's virtually all he and his siblings have known basically since birth. His grandfather designed sailboats, his father designed and raced them, and the two passed down this fever to Josh, his older brother Bernard, and their younger sister Ruby, a true sailing prodigy. They knew sailing terms and how to race boats in every weather condition better than they knew the English language or how to relax with any other pastime. Even their scientist mother plays a role, teaching them about the disbursement of air and water molecules, and how to measure the wind.

But something happened and everything changed. Josh, now 31, lives on a boat and repairs boats at a marina not far from his childhood home in Washington State. The family sailboat business has hit hard times and faces bankruptcy after too many lawsuits caused by their father's cutting corners. Their mother is becoming obsessed with solving a series of scientific equations that promise a significant monetary reward. And both his siblings have fled far away, Ruby to Africa, where she helps care for the poor and sick, and Bernard to who-knows-where, as he has become a fugitive and a champion of the working class.

"...strains of this gentle madness course through my family the way diabetes or alcoholism clusters in others. For years, sailing bound us. We were racers, builders and cruisers. It was our family business, our sport, our drug of choice. Yet eventually, sailing blew us apart, too."

It is Swiftsure, a famed sailing race, that brings the entire Johannssen clan together for one last hurrah. Sailing an old family boat altered by Josh (following his father's orders) to allow it to compete with the newer, faster crafts, their father hopes that this will be the moment that repairs all of the damage done through the years (although he's not quick to acknowledge his role in all of that damage), and restores the Johannssen name, reputation, and business. But the entire family is unprepared for what occurs, and the revelations that are revealed.

Jim Lynch may be one of the best writers you might never have heard of, and Before the Wind is a pretty terrific book. Lynch again returns to his beloved Pacific Northwest, and has created an utterly compelling portrait of a dysfunctional family both brought together and torn apart by their mutual obsession with sailing. This is beautifully written, emotionally gripping, humorous, and insightful.

I have one caveat for you: Before the Wind goes heavy on sailing terms. You may not know spinnaker from starboard, or boom from boat, but in the end, this is a story about a family, and you can guess what most of the terms mean. The book starts a little slowly, but much like a sailboat, it picks up speed and emotion and heft, until you're completely immersed. While I'd recommend any and all of Lynch's books, this is a great one to start with. I loved this.