GRR Reviews Moonstone Beach (Main Street Merchants) by Linda Seed

Moonstone Beach is a conteporary romance between a bookstore owner and a chef in coastal California town of Cambria. It's supposed to be about reawakening, about gruff exterior hiding a loving personality, and about choice between opportunity and love. However, I just don't quite feel the chemistry between the two.

To recap, Kate Bennett is a bookstore owner in the coastal town of Cambria, California, and after two years of celibate life after her divorce, may finally be ready to date again. Jackson Graham is a local chef that never stays quiet about food, and as a result came across as brash and irritating, but he had the longest crush on Kate. When Kate's friends set them up, Kate was expecting a fling (just getting her toes wet, so to speak), but Jackson is going for home-run. Just as Kate was sorta convinced that Jackson was serious... Jackson got an offer of a lifetime... an executive chef position in San Francisco... choices, choices...

WARNING SPOILER AHEAD

The book felt as if it was written half done, then finished later, as the personality of the characters seems to fundamentally shift. Kate went from celibate and shy to crazy in love in a matter of... days? Weeks? Also, she was being a total doormat in the beginning of the book (allowed her father and his new wife to take over her house, locked her from her own bedroom, eat her food, AND still get badmouthed for being a bad host, AND almost got her place sold from under her). Sure, by the end she finally snapped and started tossing their stuff out the balcony, but that's anger, not her personality. Do you really expect a girl like this to go after a guy she wanted? No. This kind of girl RUNS from confrontation.

Jackson was the far more "level-headed" one. He had a crush on Kate for years, but only when she's ready to date when he started making moves, and when faced with a choice of career or love, we knew which way will he choose.

I did find the book rather entertaining, at least near the end, when Kate finally snapped. Otherwise this would have been 2/5.

Category: Contemporary

Primary Plot: Doormat Bookstore Owner Woman Getting Wooed by Bossy Chef Guy, then Her Pushy Family Came to Visit...

Tropes: chef, evil parents, different worlds,

Overall Rating:  3/5