The Homecoming: A Shelter Bay Novel
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- ISBN13: 9780451230676
- Condition: New
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Product Description
First in a heartwarming new series from the New York Times bestselling leader
Ex- Navy SEAL Sax Douchett returns to his home town and is hailed as a local hero. But starting over is hard when he unearths a long- buried secret that reunites him with a past he’s never forgotten. She’s Sheriff Kara Conway, a girl who’s permanently held a special place in his heart. But as he cautiously reconnects with Kara and bonds with her young son, another long-held secret in Shelter Bar threatens their second chance at a life together…
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I selected up The Homecoming with no real expectation since I didn’t like the last JoAnn Ross book, Breakpoint: A High Risk Novel. Fortunately for me, The Homecoming was such a fantastic read! Although it was more all ears on the relationships aspect of the characters and interactions of the main and secondary characters and less on really solving the mysteries open, this book does not place you feeling like you were reading something that was so far out there that there was no way it could take place.
Sax Douchett and Kara Conway were fantastic H/H characters and showed how timing was everything when it comes to like. The growth of both Sax & Kara, not to mention Trey, really comes through and although the timing seemed quick, with the background of the characters clarified, it makes reading it simpler to comprehend how their feelings all developed.
I also loved that they connected and mentioned the characters we loved in the High Risk novels, especially Quinn and Cait from Crossfire: A High Risk Novel.
For persons who want an simple read lacking too much emphasis on mystery, this is the perfect book for a summer day at the beach.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Note to authors. Romantic suspense-lite is NOT romantic suspense. Writing a series involving Navy SEALs and then suddenly transforming it into dull tiny town women’s fiction before it’s over is irresponsible, unfair on your readers, and a perfect waste of time. People who like small cosy tales full of conversations about homework and cooking and all that mundane day to day stuff are not the same kind of people who selected up persons original books. If you want to change your genre, do it in another series.
This book is so unbelievably dull and occasionally worse – it stirred into the realm of stupidity when the hero, Sax (and please don’t name your hero something so close to `sex’) , ongoing talking to ghosts. The widowed heroine returns to her tiny hometown – thus continuing the literary trend of `cities = evil, tiny towns = perfect’ – with her son. Of course she has issues with her mother; she has a son who wants to play with a dog; the place is populated by `sweet’ meddling ancient biddies; and everyone spends most of the tale reminiscing about home cooked meals of their pasts.
I couldn’t even say this was any excellent as a quick, light read, as there was nothing in it to hold my interest.
Here are a few things that annoyed me:
#1 No heroes worshipping heroines’ “perfect” stretch inscription. Especially not the first time they make like! Just, no.
#2 NEVER tell us about how a sixtyish man can make his manufacture “deflate”. NEVER.
#3 The heroine puts on a pair of sunglasses so the hero can’t see the lust in her eyes. That is beyond silly. Unless this is the Black Dagger Brotherhood and a name’s giving off a bonding scent, covering up your lust is more than a small over the top – especially in such a sedate tale.
If there is a list of the least sexy things a military hero could say, JoAnn Ross has plenty of phrases to offer. Top of the list for me are : “do the horizontal get-down boogie,” and “lookie loo”.
Note to authors take #2. If you are `of a certain age’, female, and on the conservative side and that’s all you feel comfortable writing, then stick to it. If you are `of a certain age’, female, and on the conservative side but still want to write about thirty-something military men, then make sure your characters aren’t language with your voice.
So why did I dislike this books so intensely? Here’s how the chapters go:
Chapter One
Sax walks his dog.
Chapter Two
The heroine – Kara – is the town sheriff. She’s at the house of one of persons tiny town cosy Interfering Ancient Biddies. The Interfering Ancient Biddy has had her letterbox hurt. She’s so Interfering she’s telling them how to run the investigation while also reminiscing about her days as a professor. You can tell this book isn’t going to be romantic or suspenseful by this chapter alone. Things are not looking excellent.
Chapter Three
Sax and Kara check each additional out and talk about dogs.
Chapter Four
Kara has a long and dull conversation with her mother, showing some attitudes best left buried in a pre-feminist era. For a twenty-something heroine to say it’s natural for mothers to prefer sons to daughters – or something to that effect – wasn’t the most progressive of attitudes and painstakingly pissed me off.
Chapter Five
Sax spends the entire chapter language to ghosts. Yes, GHOSTS. In an unintentionally comical addition to this bizarre foray into the supernatural, the ghosts still carry their war injuries. I was left picturing all the Hollywood comedies where ghosts do just that. They tease Sax a bit about wanting to do the “horizontal get-down boogie”, and then that’s that.
Chapter Six
Kara’s mother supervises breakfast and they talk about `show and tell’ with Kara’s son.
On and on it rambled. The murder mystery with a military hero we were promised kind of eventuated eventually, but by then I did not care one bit.
I read some comments by this leader that took the attitude that with the `state of the world today’ she felt compelled to give up suspense for this slow-moving women’s fiction. There seems to be an attitude `better’ people are now turning to `more appropriate’ fiction. I’m sorry, but that excuse infuriates me. The `state of the world’ is no different to any additional decade. How about the Soviet Union or the Vietnam War? Or does `the state of the world’ only matter when it’s happening in the leader’s backyard? The terrible stuff isn’t going to go away simply because you place on a fake smile and only read sickeningly sweet tiny towns tales. If you plot on giving up romantic suspense for this stuff, then just do that. Just don’t try to clarify it by insulting more adventurous readers.
Rant over.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I can’t give this book more than three stars; Ross has certainly written better. As additional reviewers have noted, as a police procedural or suspense novel the plot is very missing. There is small police work, the terrible guy practically walks around with a huge black x on his back, and the action consists of one fight and one car chase–neither exciting.
Still its a pleasant read. Ross’s writing is excellent enough to keep you going even when the plot hasn’t hooked you. Sax Douchette, an ex-SEAL returning to his hometown after a traumatic final battle in Afghanistan, and Kara Conway, a widowed sheriff with an 8 year ancient son, are both appealing characters if very similar to many additional lead characters in books of this genre.
The small extra that lifted this book above additional mediocre novels for me (and for additional women my age, I suspect)was Faith, Kara’s mother. It seems like the characters in romance novels mostly have childhoods of one of two extremes. Either (like Sax) they come from extremely loving, supportive families with happily married parents or they come from the worst of families and suffer abuse. In contrast, Kara grows up in a levelheaded two parent family tree, the only child of a sheriff and a doctor. She knows her parents like each additional and her, but she can never shake the feeling that she doesn’t measure up to her perfectionist mother’s standards. At the same time, Faith considers her daughter the strongest woman she knows, but is frustrated by her inability to convey her like and praise to her daughter easily. This certainly struck a chord with me.
Also, Faith gets her own romance with her late spouse’s best friend. The two mature (sixtish, give or take) lovers really get to go beyond the hand holding stage and go to bed. Its not the blow by blow description of sex common for younger romantic couples. Hand holding breast is about as explicit as it gets but at least we know they’re having an actual, physical relationship they both delight in.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
So I have loved the previous books I have read by this leader. This one fell fleeting.
There will be some minor SPOILERS not more than:
This guy was an ex-SEAL. In this book that was a so what? kind of element. He might as well have been a dentist or a rodeo clown. If you’re coming into this expecting romantic suspense, look elsewhere. There was a lame mystery in it. She was a sheriff but there wasn’t much solving of the mystery shown. Pages and pages went by lacking a mention of the mystery. There were only two possible suspects for the killer so you had a 50/50 chance on guessing who done it. The whole book wandered aimlessly around. I establish myself just not really caring. There was no suspense in the mystery plot and no heat in the romance. They admitted their like, although she didn’t come right out and say it, the hero, heroine and reader knew it. Then the book meandered on for another 30 or 40 pages. With the leader telling (not showing) you that they went to various tourist destinations and had a swell time falling in like.
Then there was a very surreal conversation that the heroine had with her mother where the mom tells the heroine about a fantasy that she used to keep herself cool in the confused early days of her marriage. This scene went on and on telling every detail of how the mother imagined herself living June Cleaver’s life. I could see absolutely no point in hearing this for 4 pages. Then suddenly in the middle of the book we shift into the mother’s POV as she falls in like with her dead spouse’s best friend. So a couple of chapters of them bumping uglies. If you’re going to have multiple storylines running, you need to start them all off pretty soon in the book so we don’t go WTF? 2/3rds of the way through the book.
There was an obvious throw in of a character for a in the offing book. He was introduced in a very heavy handed way. Not pertinent to the tale at all. But then a whole lot of this book wasn’t pertinent. I’m not real fond of series set in quaint small towns. There seem to be many, many on the market lately and this is sort of a ho hum addition to the crowd.
Finally, there were ghosts in the book. You weren’t reasonably sure if they were real or part of the hero’s PTSD. Since the dog could see them and the air got cold when they were there, I reflect they were meant to be real. I kind of liked them best of all the book. But the leader kind of didn’t do anything with them and they were wasted.
Well I might give the next in this series a try but if it isn’t substantially better than this one I won’t go further than that.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Ex- Navy SEAL Sax Douchett survived being wounded and alone presumed dead by his mates as the Taliban assassins went after him in the Hindu Kush region. He survived, but even more upsetting was his few weeks of “incarceration” at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Finally he is allowed to return home to Shelter Bay, physically healed but mentally questionable as he still suffers flashbacks.
While walking with his dog Velcro, the Irish Wolfhound mutt deposits a human bone at his feet. As he thinks of the fickle finger of fate, Widow Sheriff Kara Conway receives the dispatcher’s excited call re his dog finding the bone. Kara is upset as she left the Oceanside PD to raise her eight years ancient son Trey in a safe environs following the death of his dad her beloved Jared in the line of duty as a cop handling a domestic dispute. As she works the case, a name wants the inquiry finished. At the same time Kara and Sax fall in like; he knows he loved her as a teen and never stopped while she has a list of reasons not to get involved with the middle Douchette sibling starting with Trey though Sax is so excellent with her son.
The Shelter Bay police procedural romantic suspense stars two likable lead characters and a strong support cast which obviously including Kara’s son; but also SEALs, the memory of Jared, and the townsfolk. The investigative tale line is character driven by Kara and Sax who have a heap of reasons for not getting involved. This novel is JoAnn Ross at her very best!
Harriet Klausner
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5