Dream Harbor, Book 2
From the publisher:
From the author of the viral TikTok phenomenon, The Pumpkin Spice Cafe, comes a brand new spicy romance!
When a secret message turns up hidden in a book in the Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, Hazel can’t understand it. As more secret codes appear between the pages, she decides to follow the trail of clues… she just need someone to help her out.
Gorgeous and outgoing fisherman, Noah, is always up for an adventure. And a scavenger hunt sounds like a lot of fun. Even better that the cute bookseller he’s been crushing on for months is the one who wants his help!
Hazel didn’t go looking for romance, but as the treasure hunt leads her and Noah around Dream Harbor, their undeniable chemistry might be just as hot as the fresh-out-of-the-oven cinnamon buns the bookstore sells…
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store is a cozy romantic mystery with a HEA guaranteed!
Tropes:
- opposites attract
- small town
- forced proximity
- he falls first
“A charming break from reality”–Publishers Weekly
https://amzn.to/4dbkU7K
Dream Harbor is a small New England town filled with quirky residents, much like Stars Hollow of “Gilmore Girls” fame. I’m willing to bet the farm that the author’s name is a pseudonym.
Our heroine this time around is Hazel, who manages the Cinnamon Bun Book Store. She is turning thirty in a couple of months, which is causing her some anxiety. Hazel has always been level-headed and would never describe herself as fun-loving or the life of any party. In fact, she fears turning thirty because she hasn’t done anything fun in her twenties, and is determined to change that.
When she finds a book shelved backwards in the romance section, she notices someone has dogeared a page, and when she opens to that page, a sentence is highlighted. At first she’s upset that someone defaced a book without buying it, but then she decides it is a clue, and she is going to follow it and maybe have some fun. To that end, she recruits Noah, the local fisherman and tour guide. He is a few years younger than she and has the reputation of a love-em-and-leave-em kinda guy. He hits on the summer tourists and never pursues anyone more than that. But he’s been hanging around the bookstore quite a bit, constantly seeking recommendations from Hazel and enjoying his newfound hobby of reading.
When Hazel approaches him about the clue in the book, he is all in and they start to spend time together. Hazel has never had a one-night stand or a summer fling; there were just a few relationships that went nowhere. But she is determined to have a fling before her birthday, and Noah seems like the perfect guy for that. Of course, once they start hanging out and fooling around, Hazel catches herself falling for the guy who doesn’t do relationships. Noah has been crushing on Hazel for so long that he finds himself falling as well, but neither one will admit to it.
Noah and Hazel follow several more clues that culminate in a birthday party for Hazel. By this time, she is fairly convinced that Noah has been the one leaving her the clues. No spoilers here other than Hazel and Noah find their happy ever after together, and I was so glad they did. This second book of the series was just as much fun as the first.
Note: I read a digital galley of this book, also known as an uncorrected proof. There is a line about “burying the lead” which is used incorrectly – it is “burying the lede,” a newspaper term. Lede and lead are homonyms, words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings. My bachelor’s degree is in English, and mistakes like this immediately rip me out of a story. It should have been caught prior to publication, so I emailed the publicist to check, but I never got a reply. Hopefully, it was corrected, but I don’t have a finished copy to check.
9/2024 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
THE CINNAMON BUN BOOK STORE by Laurie Gilmore. One More Chapter (September 3, 2024). ISBN: 978-0008641580. 384p.
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