A man with secrets, ex-soldier Seth Hansen comes to the small town of Harland, North Carolina, to heal. The last thing he wants is to get involved—with the community, or with lovely waitress Lisa Sawyer, who has big dreams of leaving Harland. When a massive storm hits, it will take a dramatic rescue, and Lisa’s unshakable belief, to wake a part of Seth he thought he’d lost forever. Suddenly one reluctant hero finds himself captivated by Christmas spirit. If only he can help Lisa discover the place she really wants to be…
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was looking forward to reading about Seth and Lisa because they seemed to be lovable characters within the community. However I wasn’t really into it. I would recommend it to people who really enjoy love stories that are easy going, slow-paced, and to cat lovers.
Mia Ross’s character descriptions were great but I didn’t feel they match their actions and subsequent responses. Overall, their relationship never developed into anything relatable and believable to me personally. It fell flat and was an incredibly slow for my style. Emotions were stereotypical and monotonous. The voices were indistinguishable at some points.
As far as content is concerned, the bottom line is they just had major communication problems and neither one of them could see past that. Seth had PTSD and Lisa played victim to her own fantasies in trying to the hero of their relationship and tries too hard to read every single one of his emotions. But not even those parts of the story took off. Ultimately they were just using each other and the emotional exchanges weren’t well-developed.
There were hints at making heart-wrenching decisions but I couldn’t relate or care less. Likely it was because the rationale behind them was still justifiable in either case because nothing matched. It didn’t seem to be about internal conflict either. Even the characters could talk themselves out of anything without reprieve and it was difficult to know if any of it even mattered in the first place.
The plot lacked direction and couldn’t count on the either the writer or reader to figure it out. I really did appreciate the faith-based aspect and charm that she brought to the characters, however. I’d like to try reading another book by Mia Ross in the future.
