Review copy provided by the publisher
With Sandcastle Beach, Jenny Holiday delivers another winner filled with bickery banter, small town antics, and a romance that everyone can see except for the hero and heroine. If you’re a fan of Much Ado About Nothing, Jenny’s given us our own Beatrice and Benedick in this rivals-to-lovers story.
Personally, I’ve been waiting for Maya and Law’s story. I fully expected, of the three heroes in the series so far, that Law was gonna be the cool dude with moves. The truth is, he’s so taken with Maya, he has no game whatsoever, and it’s completely adorable.
I suspect some readers are going to have a love/hate relationship with Maya…initially she seems like kind of a mooch, all take and no give, but Law doesn’t seem to mind it all. So ok, if he doesn’t mind, I guess I don’t either. So…
In Sandcastle Beach, Maya Mehta is the town’s theater director; Benjamin “Law” Lawson owns the local bar, and their feud goes back years. The theater’s seen better days and Maya’s gotta come up with a plan to infuse it with cash for repairs, staff salaries, and raising the curtain for another season. When a former boy bander turned actor joins her production of Much Ado About Nothing, Maya’s got a shot at filling every seat this season. But winning a local business grant wouldn’t hurt either. There’s just one thing standing in her way, Law has his eye on that grant, too.
Sandcastle Beach is slow burn, low angst, but romantic in its own way. Despite their on-going competition, Law is actually the most supportive friend Maya has, the one who understands her business dilemmas, the one who lets her use his secret WiFi, the one who stocks a wine at his bar just for her. Though this isn’t Jenny’s sexiest story, I still really liked it.
I will say, there are time jumps in the first three chapters make for a little bit of a bumpy start, but I think part of that is just catching readers up on the players/events of the first two books.
4 stars
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