"Claire Bradford's life goes from bad to worse"
Reviewed by Leanne Davis
Posted July 22, 2011
Romance
Claire read her horoscope and it's not coming true. First,
her beading store is vandalized. She has to deal with her
daughter's love of her stepmother on a daily basis, and the
police officer who responds to her 911 call is a hunk. He's
also her best friend's younger brother. Claire doesn't have
time for romance. Ryan McKnight has grown into a man who takes his
responsibilities seriously and he is determined to find the
culprits committing these robberies. Four stores were
robbed that morning. In Claire's case, they didn't just
steal her spare cash and trash the store but they destroyed
a wedding gown that Claire was going to bead for the mayor's
daughter. Hope's Crossing, CO has always felt safe, where neighbors
could depend on each other. With the robberies, the
attitude is changing. As the investigation proceeds, Ryan
finds that the the mayor's son is probably the ringleader of
the teenagers committing these crimes. He starts chasing
the boy's truck and the chase becomes dangerous due to icy
conditions. Ryan backs off but the boy continues speeding
resulting in a major accident. Claire is badly hurt and all
the passengers in the truck are critically injured or killed. With the townspeople in mourning, Hope's Crossing is no
longer the small town that cared. Once Claire starts her
recuperation, she can no longer fight her growing attraction
to Ryan. This is the worst possible time for her to fall in
love and with a younger man at that. Ryan is fighting his own battles. He feels responsible for
the accident and the deaths that occurred. He isn't sure he
is going to stay in Hope's Crossing but his attraction to
Claire is too strong to ignore. There is a strong vein of sadness throughout this story as
we watch the characters grieve for the young people who were
lost and the innocence of the town turns to distrust. Ryan
and Claire will have to battle their own insecurities and
the concerns that their age difference will inspire in
friends and family members. While this is not an
inspirational romance, the story is very uplifting and
inspirational in the way that townspeople pull together to
try to regain their trust in each other. Claire's battle to
overcome her injuries and her concern for others will have
readers cheering for her.
SUMMARY
Claire Bradford needed a wake-up call. What she didn't
need was a tragic car accident. As a single mom and the
owner of a successful bead shop, Claire leads a
predictable life in Hope's Crossing, Colorado. So what is she has no time for romance? At least, that's
what she tells herself, especially when her best friend's
sexy younger brother, Riley McKnight, comes back to town
as the new chieft of police. But when the accident forces Claire to slow down and lean
on others - especially Riley - she realizes, for the first
time, that things need to chane. And not just in her own
life. The accident - and the string of robberies committed
by teenagers that led up to it - is a wake-up call to the
people of Hope's Crossing. The sense of community and
togetherness has been lost during those tough years. But with a mysterious "Angel of Hope" working to inspire
the town, Riley and Claire will find themselves opening up
to love and other possibilities by the end of an
extraordinary summer....
Excerpt"We are each of us angels with one wing. And we can only fly
embracing each other."
—Luciano de Crescenzo
Lousy, stupid horoscope.
Claire Bradford stood with one hand on the doorway and
the other clutching her coffee go-cup as she stared at the
chaotic mess inside her store.
According to the stars—at least according to the
horoscope in the Hope Gazette she'd scanned while standing
in line at her friend Maura's coffee shop for her morning
buzz after dropping the kids off at school—she was supposed
to prepare herself for something fun and exciting headed her
way today. She had been thinking more along the lines of a
few dozen new customers at her bead store or maybe a big
commission on one of her more intricate custom pieces.
Discovering that String Fever had been burglarized during
the night didn't exactly fit her personal definition of
either fun or exciting.
Beads covered the beige berber in a glittery, jumbled
disaster as apparently someone had yanked out an entire vast
display of tiny clear drawers and dumped their contents all
over the floor. Her cash register drawer was open and the
small amount of cash she kept on hand to make change was
missing. Her office door had been left ajar, too, something
she never did, and even from here, she could see a big,
dusty, empty spot on her desk where her computer should be.
She could handle the material loss and her computer was
automatically backed up off-site several times a day. The
mess, on the other hand, would be a nightmare to clean up.
Claire gave a tiny whimper and closed her eyes, dreading the
hours and days of work ahead of her, re-sorting all those
scattered beads into their hundreds of proper compartments.
String Fever was hanging by a thread anyway in the uncertain
economy. How could she afford the time and energy involved
in setting things to rights again?
Chester whined beside her, his basset hound features even
more morose than usual. He was uncanny at picking up her
emotions. She scratched behind his acres-long ears. "I know,
buddy. Sucks, doesn't it?"
She dug in her coat pockets to find where she'd stowed
her cell phone so that she could dial 9-1-1. She had only
punched in one number before the phone vibrated in her hand
and suddenly the nuclear meltdown alert ringtone she had
programmed for her mother sounded its death knell through
the empty store.
Yeah, not much fun or excitement there, either. Rotten
horoscope.
Chester whined again. He hated that ringtone as much as
she did. Claire swallowed her groan and despite thirty-six
years of better instincts, she hit the talk button to accept
the call. Ruth Tatum had trained her daughter well. "Mom, I
can't talk right now. Sorry. The store has been robbed. I'll
call you back as soon as I can, okay?"
"Robbed? You've got to be kidding!"
"Really, Mom? You think I'd joke about something like this?"
"How would I know?" Ruth went on the defensive, as she
did so well. "You've always had a weird sense of humor."
Yeah. That was her. Making up stories about her store
being robbed just to go for the cheap laugh. "I'm not
joking. The store really has been robbed."
"That's terrible! What did they take?"
"I don't know yet. I just walked in the door and barely
had a chance to even react before you called. I need to go
so I can call the police, Mom."
"Well, call me as soon as you can and tell me what's
going on. Do you need me to come down there?"
Sure, like she needed to stick a couple dozen earring
hooks in her eyeballs. "Not right now. Thanks for the offer,
though. I'll call you later."
She hung up and quickly dialed the police.
What do you think about this review?
Comments
1 comment posted.
Re: Claire Bradford's life goes from bad to worse
I am a huge fan of stories set in small towns. That means that when I saw the blurb for Blackberry Summer I had to read it. I hadn't ever read RaeAnne Thayne, but as I turned the last page of Blackberry Summer I knew that I had found a new author to follow.
Blackberry Summer is basically the story of Claire and Riley. They grew up in the same small town, but life took them on different journeys, but eventually the twists and turns of those journeys brought their paths back together.
Claire is a few years older than Riley, and this is the first book I can recall personally reading with a heroine older than the hero. However if the age difference wasn't mentioned periodically I would have easily forgotten about it as I got emotionally involved in the ups and downs of Clair and Riley's relationship.
For those readers who are fans of Robyn Carr and Susan Wiggs and the small town environments they have created I suggest they check out RaeAnne Thayne and her town of Hope's Crossing in Blackberry Summer. I don't think they'll be disappointed.
(Sandi Shilhanek 8:06am August 5, 2011)
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