I have been lucky enough to read all three books in this series ahead of time (ARC's). And I'm so happy more are on the way !
Following the USA Today bestseller, Lost and Found Sisters, comes Rainy Day Friends, Jill Shalvis’ moving story of heart, loss, betrayal, and friendship.
Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband’s death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers she isn’t the only one grieving his sudden passing. A serial adulterer, he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife. Rocked by the infidelity, Lanie is left to grapple with searing questions. How could she be so wrong about a man she thought she knew better than anyone? Will she ever be able to trust another person? Can she even trust herself?
Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. At first, she feels like an outsider among the boisterous Capriottis. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Especially Mark Capriotti, a gruffly handsome Air Force veteran turned deputy sheriff who manages to wind his way into Lanie’s cold, broken heart—along with the rest of the clan.
Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Green changes all that. The fresh-faced twenty-one-year old seems as sweet as they come…until her dark secrets come to light—secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie’s only just begun to build.
Oh, how I LOVE this series.
It strikes all the right notes for me.
Like the previous two stories, Rainy Day Friends has the heartwarming and witty story telling one has come to expect from Ms Shalvis.
RDF had me both tearing up because I was laughing and truly struck in my heart (for multiple reasons). There are some thoughtful plot points in this novel that are dealt with in a realistic manner (at least IMHO).
It is also filled with wonderful characters - I must mention Mark's little girls plus a certain four legged furry one too!
Again I have been lucky enough to read all three books in this series ahead of time (ARC's). And I'm so happy more are on the way !
Chapter 1
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the
worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time Karma was a bitch,
but every once in awhile she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie
Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her
time. Seize the day and all that, and drawing a deep breath, she exited the
highway at Wildstone.
The old wild-west California town
was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine/ranching
country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a
lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she
added tricky and slick to her growing list of issues. She was already white-knuckling
a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to
nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country
driving.
Never
leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed
direction, but before she could relax a trio of deer bounded across the road.
“Run, Bambi,” she cried, hitting her brakes, and by the skin of their
collective teeth, they all missed each other.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live
wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been
instructed.
It took a moment for her pulse to come
down from stroke level. She’d been taught anti-anxiety techniques, but she’d
never quite figured out how to make any of them work while in the actual throes
of an anxiety attack.
It’s
all good she told herself but because she wasn’t buying what she was
selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five year old
starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand new
job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes
adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car
ride -- only to find out the real destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across
the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were
green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream,
all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen
over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive
sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie
could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching under
her shoes, she headed through the entrance beneath which was a huge wooden sign
that read:
Capriotti
Winery, from our fields to your table…
Her heart sped up. Nerves, of
course, the bane of her existence. But after a very crappy few years, she was
changing her path. For once in her godforsaken life, something was going to
work out for her. This was going to
work out for her.
She was grimly determined.
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is, um, mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning books wherever romances are sold and visit her website,www.jillshalvis.com, for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
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