The Love Haters by Katherine Center

 When Katie’s boyfriend cheats on her, her self-esteem takes a nosedive. Worse, her coworker assigns her a video profile of a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Key West in The Love Haters, a contemporary romance from Katherine Center arriving on bookstore shelves May 20.

Katie does not want the assignment—not because the Coastie is a hunk—but because she cannot swim nor is she a fan of helicopters, which are used in these rescues. Not only does she need to be a swimmer but she also needs to train to be the person who needs rescue from the ocean. However, if she does not fulfill the assignment, she will become a candidate for lay-off.

Tom “Hutch” Hutchinson is said to be a love-hater having gone through an ordeal in which his brother’s drunk fiancé threw herself at him at his brother’s rehearsal dinner. That created a rift between the brothers, who were already on shaky ground.

Now a bit of a love-hater herself after being dumped, Katie finds herself drawn to Hutch as he is such a kind, considerate person, as well as a competent rescue swimmer. When he learns she cannot swim other than maybe a sloppy dog paddle, he starts meeting with her daily to make her a competent swimmer. The more the two spend time together, the more the love-hating may be wearing off.

Readers will be rooting for Katie and Hutch in the latest from Katherine Center whose The Lost Husband and Happiness for Beginners were both made into Netflix movies. The author lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas, with her family.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 18, 2025.

I would like to thank St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review. 

 

Where the Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe

 In the first of two planned novels about the history of a plantation in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and its family, Mary Alice Monroe writes in the voice of an adult Eliza Rivers as she recalls her early years in Where the Rivers Merge being published May 13. The present is June 17, 1988, when Eliza, now Mrs. DeLancey, plans to protect Mayfield by putting 1,000 acres surrounding the farm into a conservation plan, a move her son Arthur protests as he tries to push her out of the DeLancey Group.

Eliza’s life as a young girl in the early 1900s consisted of plenty of chores but also time to explore the land, the pond, the forests, the birds, and other creatures. A horse lover, Eliza recounts a bit of history about the Marsh Tacky as she recollects her father’s purchase of the stallion Capitan. However, life on Mayfield was not all rosy as the Rivers family was “land rich and money poor” causing some of the strife in the often-dysfunctional family with a city mother and a country father.

Over the years, Eliza has been able to turn things around on Mayfield, creating a profitable truck market business, and she is developing the Mayfield Wildlife Foundation to preserve the land. With her second marriage, she gained a “collection of businesses into a conglomerate of corporations and subsidiaries” that became the DeLancey Group.

With her son’s limited vision for Mayfield and the company, Eliza seeks out her niece Savannah and grandniece Norah to visit Mayfield so she can share the story of her family’s history with them. A mural in the dining room of the house serves to prod Eliza to tell the stories that go with the scenes starting in the 1700s with construction of the fields for the farm’s original crop, rice.

This initial book in the series takes the reader up to Eliza’s first wedding in 1926 as she ends the telling with “This story is far from over.” Mary Alice Monroe, the Queen of Low Country Fiction and a go-to author of beach reads, has turned her hand to historical fiction, leaving this reader eager for the next book, to be called The Rivers’ End, to learn about all the tales remaining in the mural and the questions left unanswered.

Monroe is at her best when dealing with complex family situations and relationships. She lives on the Isle of Palms, a small barrier island just outside of Charleston, and has a mountain hideaway in North Carolina.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting April 12, 2025.

I would like to thank William Morrow, an imprint of Harper/Collins Publishers, and NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Readers’ Copy in return for an objective review.

The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick

 Traveling back to the 1960s when Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique was a popular book club read, four women—Margaret, Viv, Bitsy, and Charlotte—struggle with their place in the world in The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick coming out April 22.

Living in a planned community in Virginia, the women call themselves the Bettys in a salute to the author of Mystique. Bonded by their book club, the four each deal with various struggles: raising children mostly single-handedly, dealing with troubling times in their marriages, and dissatisfaction with their current life.

Though Margaret is devoted to her three children and her husband, she wants to do something more with her life. A writing contest catches her eye, causing her to wonder if she could brush up on her skills to become a successful writer.

Viv is proud of her “six “terrific, respectful, clean-cut, all-American kids,” loves her sexy husband, and really wants to get back to work as a nurse now that the kids are all in school. Frustrated with her doctor who will not prescribe birth control pills without her husband’s signature, she realizes her back-to-work plan is a fail as the smell of greasy pepperoni sends her to the bathroom…twice.

Bitsy is the youngest of the wives at 23. Having grown up with horses, Bitsy has always wanted to be a veterinarian but has been frustrated when none of her college professors would write her a recommendation for vet school because she is a woman. She  marries a veterinarian and works as a stable hand where she gets to ride and care for horses.

Charlotte is new to the community of Concordia, quickly earning a reputation as an “oddball.” For some reason not yet known by the others, her husband has banished her from the New York she loves to suburban living in Virginia. Her marital problems seem most profound as her husband is rarely home and is known to have a wandering eye. She finds joy in her four children and her ambitious painting projects.

While they attribute their willingness to try new outlooks and actions to having read Friedan’s book, they also give credit to the bonds they have created as they deal with the past, cope with a changing world, and redefine themselves.

Marie Bostwick writes uplifting historical and contemporary fiction. Marie’s popular Cobbled Court Quilt series has been embraced by quilters and non-sewers alike. Her novel The Second Sister was made into the Hallmark Hall of Fame feature film “Christmas Everlasting.” If she is not reading a book, Marie most likely is in her office writing one. She lives with her husband in Washington state.