What is wrong with Moonlight Harbor? Is it something in the water? There has be something in it to make everyone just lose every single marble of common sense.
There has to be to explain why Celeste Jones, the heroine of The Summer Retreat is so willing to just be…willing?
In this next installment is the Moonlight Harbor series by Sheila Roberts, we start off with a broken heart. Celeste finds her boyfriend in bed with another woman. Her boyfriend, the police officer. A characteristic detail that becomes an unreasonable weight in Celeste’s dilemmas further down the chapters.
Taking advantage of her sisters current need for help at running the Driftwood Inn, Celeste packs her bags and dashes off to the harbor. Completely understandable and relatable decision. Those have been scorned have the immediate desire to run and place some sizable distance from betrayal to establish some sort sort of sanity. A harbor sounds perfect. Keeping yourself physically busy cleaning the rooms is a great idea. There is beach to watch, breathe, and center yourself.
But then it wouldn’t be a romance book would it? For at this harbor, there are, of course, two possible beaus to snag Celeste’s attention. There is the handsome (of course) preacher who is kind and almost perfect. There is also the rugged but handsome (of course) writer staying at the inn who is all gruff but is definitely very passionate.
Not only do we see Celeste deciding between two guys, her also equally beautiful sister is between two guys of her own. Although the sisters story is in this book it’s just a parallel track to Celeste’s romance and pretty a set up for another book.
The story pace is very quick. So quick. It just seems like minutes before Celeste has even walked through the doors at Driftwood Inn that she is quickly in the path of the pastor’s attention. This immediately becomes the talk of the town and the church members become obnoxious jealous hens. Very un-church like behavior and opinions circle around Celeste endangering the tenuous trust between her and the pastor. As all of this is occurring her banter with the writer quickly becomes heavy with sexual tension. There is also a third guy but since he’s a policeman, of course he’s out of the picture. For all policeman apparently share the same relationship habits of cheating. Never mind, that they are all individuals.
This is where all common sense just goes right off to the fishes. She is in a vulnerable state of mind. Her self-esteem is damaged, her self worth is being questioned, and her very character is being attacked by literal strangers. What she needs is a friend. Someone that she can talk to, someone that can remind her that not all men are horrible. They are just human. Instead, she immediately becomes engaged. Despite every single red flag, she goes along with the preparations. The pacing of the book is so fast that we don’t see any relationship really developed let alone any chemistry. Celeste is going by what appears right so of course, it’s not going to end well.
The major part of this story is the abrupt change of cartoon villainy from all of the men. All of them. The first one cheated. One becomes suffocatingly possessive, one is a jerk, and the other is way too aggressive with getting her to love him. It all seems to happen after Fourth of July. Do sparklers taint the waters and it affects all the men? At this point, I was hoping that she would just fling her arms and shoo them all away.
There was absolutely no romance to enjoy and the sexual content was abrupt. With a harbor setting, there was expectations of moonlight strolls by the water, possible romance on the beach, or something. The very atmosphere of a beach is already on the edge of the world so where were all the romantic scenery?
The book does read very fast. Fast enough to skim right over the conflicts and whatever romance. It does have a happy ending of some sort, it’s just not very satisfying. Very low on the sexual content range. It is a good quick read for the beach ironically. It will definitely help to imagine some more feistier beach fantasies while staring at the ocean.
Take a visit to Moon Harbor yourself. A Summer Retreat is available now. You can follow the author via twitter a @_Sheila_Roberts and Facebook (@funwithsheila) or at her website (http://www.sheilasplace.com).
