📚#FeelGoodFiction Sandra Reviews Patches of Red by Liz Flaherty for Rosie’s #BookReview Team #RBRT #BookX – Rosie Amber
Today’s team review is from Sandra.
Sandra blogs here https://www.firthproof.co.uk/index.php/book-reviews
Sandra has been reading Patches Of Red by Liz Flaherty.
Patches of Red is the second book in the Harper Loch trilogy, with the title being a reference to patchwork quilt making that features prominently in the narrative. Ellie and Jesse have recently arrived in Harper Loch, with no firm plans for their respective futures. They meet when Ellie takes a temporary job as a bartender at the restaurant Jesse is running while his niece is having a baby. They don’t hit it off straight away, but slowly start to become friends.
The peaceful setting of this small lakeside community in Michigan is vividly brought to life, with her writer friend Maggie’s unusual house being especially interesting. The focus of the novel is not the romantic relationship between Ellie and Jesse, which happens very slowly anyway, but two fifty-somethings working out how the next stage of their lives would unfold. They had both quit their jobs and left their old lives behind, their children having grown up, and it was now time to decide what came next.
Ellie and Jesse are interesting characters, being that little bit more mature than is usual in stories like this, and are surrounded by family and friends who support and look out for each other. Patches of Red is the second book in this trilogy, and the only one I have read, but this did not matter as I never felt that I had missed anything vital to my understanding of the story.
I enjoyed the quilting theme, something I have always wanted to try but am not sure I would have the patience for. The way Jesse kept getting Ellie’s name wrong right to the end of the book, presumably deliberately, was amusing and endearing as was the image of them riding around the lake on golf carts. I enjoyed this thoughtful and moving story and intend to read the next book to find out what the future holds for Jesse’s son Zack.Â
Book Description:
He’s handsome but can’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy.
After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.
Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet …
