Home to River's Edge by Nan Reinhardt ~ a Review

by Donna Huber

Still grieving Eli has made a promise to visit the house he was building before his fiancee died. Jasmine's life has imploded and she is heading home to lick her wounds when she literally runs into Eli. They haven't spoken in the 15 years since he dumped her a few days before senior year prom. But since both of their dreams have been derailed, they make a New Year's Eve pact to get their lives back on the right path by their high school reunion in the summer.

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A free book was provided for an honest review.

April 2023; Tule Publishing; ebook (215 pages)
romance

I don't read a lot of romance, but I wanted something sweet and fluffy. A decade ago, I read several books from Tule Publishing that were sweet stories of love with a meet-cute start. So when Home to River's Edge came across my email I decided to give it a try.

It is set in a small town in Indiana which is where I'm originally from so that added a fun element to the story for me. Eli and Jasmine have a meet-cute of sorts in the form of Jasmine rear-ending Eli's truck while he is indecisively sitting on the side of the road leading up to his unfinished house. 

I liked the characters and the town. I'm glad that there wasn't some big misunderstanding that kept them apart, but I was really wanting a romance that had human interaction. I don't think they ever went on a date. I don't count Jasmine and Eli drinking wine from a bottle in his unfinished house as a date. There was also very little in the way of relationship development. They went from seeing each other for the first time in 15 years to tearing each other clothes off within a couple of pages. It also seemed like the book was mostly about them making out. The heat level isn't actually very high as we only get the foreplay.

I think it would have been better if the conflict had remained in the town. There was actually a set-up for it with the town council. Instead, the conflict has Jasmine heading back to DC. This conflict had me disliking Eli some. He acted really weird about her having to go back to DC because of an FBI investigation into her old office. She didn't have a choice (the FBI "asked" her to come back and might have been arrested if she refused) and he acted like she did.

Home to River's Edge is book 1 in The Weaver Sisters series. I actually thought the book was more about Eli rather than Jasmine, but as she has 2 sisters (they are triplets), I saw the set-up for the series as each sister finding love. If you hate waiting between books, you won't have to wait long on this one - it looks like the series will wrap up by the end of the year.

Buy Home to River's Edge at Amazon

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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