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Brynn Wilder is coping with the loss of her mother and the end of a longtime relationship, so she takes up a friend on the suggestion to spend a summer recuperating in a delightful little town on the shores of Lake Superior. She stays in a quaint old boardinghouse run by a quirky older woman and gets to know the others staying there for the whole summer: friendly couple Jason and Gil and distractingly handsome Dominic, whose plentiful, unusual tattoos add just another layer of attraction for her (and half of the town).
Jason, who had been married to high school sweetheart Alice for three decades before coming out as gay, and husband Gil decide to take in Alice for the summer. Diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, she needs more attention than her daughter can give her, and Jason and Gil do all they can to help her feel comfortable and at ease.
The setting is lovely and the people are instant friends, but strange things start happening as soon as Brynn settles in to LuAnn’s. She hears voices and sees things — people — no one else sees. A woman died, ostensibly of natural causes at a ripe old age, in a room in the house over the winter, which is locked up out of respect for her death now, but Brynn is getting glimpses into it. And Alice, sometimes confused and forgetful, tells Brynn and others things she can’t possibly know. Brynn is unsettled and unsure about why she seems to be the focal point of much of it.
The locals, including LuAnn, tell her ghosts are common there, and not to be concerned. If a ghost has something to say to her, Brynn is told, just listen.
Through it all, Brynn is drawn to Dominic, who is as mysterious as he is striking. He could be the love of her life. But he could be dangerous, too.
This story is set in the same charming tourist town, with several of the primary characters, as Webb’s Daughters of the Lake. I remembered enjoying that book but not being particularly blown away by it, so I wasn’t surprised when I looked back on it and discovered the character overlap but hadn’t remembered them or their stories at all. Both books are a little gothic, stories of women who needed time for their hearts to heal in a lovely location, with differing levels of ghost involvement. I think I appreciated this one a bit more (even though I accurately guessed quite early on one of the two twists at the end).
Rated: Mild, for about 25 instances of mild and 10 instances of moderate profanity and mild sexual content: characters kiss but then sex scenes are “fade-to-black.”
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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