(NOTE: I wrote this review in August and then forgot to post it! See text below about having a busy summer….)
I’ve been having an issue with my Libby queue lately: all of the books I’m most excited about reading become available at the same time, and then I get caught up in all of the hubbub of summer, then I get halfway through just ONE of the books I’ve been waiting on before they all go back into my queue. After a few years of little to no socializing, it feels like this is the first summer that we’re back to traveling and socializing at a pre-pandemic level. It’s lovely in many ways, but I admit that sometimes I want to tell everyone to leave me alone so I can read my books!
Luckily, Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune was sufficiently fast, breezy, and addictive that the time period between when it became available and when I finished reading it was….less than 24 hours. Yep, I pulled one of my old tricks of staying up until 4:00am on a work night to read a book in one sitting.
Meet Me at the Lake opens with Fern Brookbanks right back where she started: her mom’s lakeside resort, which she has found herself in charge of following her mother’s unexpected death. While struggling to get back on her feet underneath herself and keep her mom’s beloved resort afloat, a figure from her past walks through the door: Will Baxter, who broke her heart nine years before. Should Fern trust Will now? And if she falls for him again, can she break through his barriers and learn the secrets he’s been holding back for nine years?
As I’ve already mentioned, this was a read-in-one-sitting book for me – a perfect beach read (or in my case, a perfect read-on-my-phone-in-the-dead-of-night book). The romance was nice, although I was impatient with Will’s secretive nature. If he had been open with Fern at ANY point in the book there would have been literally no drama (and no book, I guess). That said, it was all handled well enough between the characters that I never felt like the relationship itself was overly “red flag”-y and I was happy with how the book resolved.
I recommend Meet Me at the Lake for romance fans and anyone looking for a “beach read” as the summer winds down.