Review: Paradise Girls by Sandy Gingras

Sandy Gingras's Paradise Girls features a broken engagement. A ruined vacation in paradise. One adorable little girl. The perfect recipe for the chance of a lifetime...

It’s Christmas time, and Mary Valley is in a funk. She’s a writer for home magazines, but she’s lost touch with what home means. Her life seems meaningless. The last house she wrote about was a gazillion-dollar mansion with a moat! Plus, she’s estranged from her daughter, CC and granddaughter, Larkin and mired in a dead-end relationship with her boss.

Daniel is a man adrift since his son Timmy was killed in Afghanistan. He’s living on a houseboat in Florida with Timmy’s three-legged dog, Tripod and taking tourists out on fishing charters. But his life is on the edge. He’s painting his houseboat black, and he can’t stop thinking about “getting lost at sea.”

When Mary’s boss tells her he’s spending Christmas with his ex, she books a trip with her family to The Low Key Inn, a hotel on the edge of the Everglades. But things go wrong from the get-go. CC bails out of the vacation, and Mary is stuck with an unhappy Larkin. The hotel is dated and down-on-its-luck, and perhaps its owner is a witch. Then Mary meets Daniel, casts a hook into his head and wrecks his boat.

This is the story of how wounded people can help each other heal, how lost people can help each other find their way home. How life can become a love story…

 

My Review:

Heartwarming and endearing.

After Mary breaks up with her fiancé, her best friend suggests a vacation.  Mary and her granddaughter head to the Florida where she stays at a quaint resort called the Low-Key Inn, where it seems amazing things happen to the guests.  Some find love, some find adventure and some discover a whole new life.  Mary takes her life in a whole new direction; new friends a new fun-loving attitude, and most importantly, Daniel, the captain of the boat who took Mary and her granddaughter out fishing. 

The Low-key Inn is also a place where life-long friendships are made.  And in the center of it all is Ollie, the resort owner.  But Ollie is struggling to keep the place afloat and doesn’t know what her future will look like until she meets Al.  Al just might be who Ollie needed in her life at the time.

I had a hard time putting this book down. The characters grew on me and I couldn’t wait to see how their stories would turn out.  I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this book.

 

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, St. Martin's Griffin and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.