Hope Harbor by Irene Hannon

Series: Hope Harbor # 1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Revell
Released: June 30, 2015
354 pages

About the Book:

 

Tracy Campbell never wanted to leave Hope Harbor, Oregon, or the idyllic three-generation cranberry farm where she grew up. But life--and love--altered her plans. When tragedy strikes and changes her plans yet again, she finds herself back in her hometown with a floundering farm to run and a heartbreaking secret. Romance is not on her agenda. Nor is it on Michael Hunter's. The visitor from Chicago has daunting secrets of his own. But when Tracy recruits him to help save a struggling charitable organization, the winds of change begin to sweep through Hope Harbor, bringing healing, hope, and love to countless lives--including their own.

 

My Rating & Thoughts:    🌟 🌟 🌟  (3 stars)

“Sticking your head in the sand to escape problems

only worked if you were a sand crab.”

 

Michael has come to Hope Harbor looking for a place to escape to deal with his troubled heart. His trip doesn’t start out as planned but with God’s intervention he finds much more than he was expecting. Tracey is completely focused on saving her family’s Cranberry Farm and has closed herself off to any potential relationships after dealing with the loss of her husband. Then there is Anna the self-imposed hermit whose life completely changes after one little act. All three characters have found hope by the end of the story, but I found that at times the story progressed slowly without much happening. There were so many widow and widower characters, even a widowed seagull. I struggled to connect with either Tracey or Michael, and this made it hard for me to cheer for them. There were times I really liked Tracey but there were also times when she annoyed me, such as when she was rude to Michael for no good reason. My favourite characters were two secondary characters, Anna and Uncle Bud. I loved how Uncle Bud teased Tracey but also voiced his true opinions to her which got her to evaluate her true feelings. I became invested in Anna’s story wanting to know what caused her to shut the world out and how her life would be changed, I was pleased with the ending she was given. There were some good lines and lessons learned throughout the story. The descriptions of Hope Harbor were so wonderfully done that I could easily picture the setting and will be reading the next in the series as Irene Hannon is one of my favourite authors and just because one book doesn’t have me falling for the main characters it won’t stop me from reading the series further.

 

“It was always much easier to clean up messes when they were fresh.”

 

“We’ve both made mistakes we’re not proud of. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people; it means we’re human. And humans are flawed.”

 

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed in this

review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)