Summer By the Tides - Contemporary Fiction Review

Goodreads:  Summer by the Tides by Denise Hunter

Rating: Very Good
Source: Publisher

Description:  Following a painful betrayal, Maddy Monroe's love life is a wreck, and her restaurant career is in shambles. When her grandmother goes missing, she and her estranged sisters converge at the family beach house in Sea Haven, North Carolina. Being with uptight Nora and free-spirited Emma at the place where their family broke apart is a struggle, and undercurrents of jealousy and resentment threaten to pull the sisters under. In the midst of the storm, sparks begin to fly between Maddy and Gram's maddening neighbor, Connor Murphy.
As the sisters pack up the family belongings, memories of idyllic, slow-paced summers are resurrected. But long-buried secrets also come to light as Maddy discovers that all was not as it appeared that last summer in Sea Haven--nor today in the seemingly perfect lives of her sisters.

As family tensions rise and Connor causes tumult in Maddy's heart, the sisters must find a way to accept each other for the women they've become before the bitterness of the past destroys their hope for a future.

Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Romance - Contemporary

Why I Picked This Book:  So many reasons!  The cover, the sisters, the grandmother, the beach setting, the having everything apart and trying to reconnect, so many of my favorite things.

My Impression:  This is my first book by Denise Hunter but it won't be my last.  I really enjoyed getting to know Maddy and her sisters and Connor and his sisters.  The setup that got Maddy and her sisters to Belle Island was entertaining and made for a bit of a realistic conflict right at the beginning.  I loved the contrast of the sibling relationships.  While Connor's sisters drive him crazy there's a lot of affection and good intentions while for Maddy there's a lot of resentment and anger and bitterness.  Poor Maddy gets stuck in the middle of her two older sisters and tries to make peace in a situation she had nothing to do with. 

The word that keeps running through my head to describe this book is "nice" which sounds a bit lackluster but it really isn't.  This was a nice read that had me invested in the characters and enjoying the plot without being overly dramatic or angsty.  I enjoyed getting to know Maddy and Connor and seeing the relationship between the two of them was sweet without being saccharine.   I really appreciated their honesty with each other both in their own first impressions of each other (some wrong, some right) and in dealing with old baggage.  After reading so many books where the characters never actually talk to each other this was a delightful change.  This was a book I enjoyed reading after I got snuggled into bed and it was nice in the nicest sense of the word.

Would I Read More of this Series/Author?  Absolutely!  I really liked how she handled all the relationships between the characters and I'm looking forward to reading more from her.

Would I Recommend this Book?  If you enjoy women's fiction with a sweet romance I think you'd enjoy this one. 

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* I received this book in exchange for an honest review.  As always my opinions and impressions are completely my own. *