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#BookReview: Uncharted Waters by Tammy L. Grace

Alaskan Gold. This is a tale of a teacher dealing with the first few months of retirement after a 30+ yr career who goes on the cruise she was gifted by her former colleagues and who meets a man dealing with his own issues as well. Other than the age issue specifically, I’ve actually witnessed similar “relation-*ships*” develop over my 15 years of cruising. Even in this novella, Grace manages to pack in a great deal of both drama and Alaskan Cruise details – even including the seemingly ubiquitous photographers. And yes, because this *is* a tale from Grace… there are dogs. 🙂

On a series structure side, know that each of these Sail Away novellas are a “series” only in that they all share a general common theme – in this case, that they mostly take place on cruises. Thus, any book in this “series” can be read in any order, and in fact I’ve now already read a couple of them “out of order” with no harm.

Ultimately yet again a tale with more drama than I’ve ever personally experienced on a cruise, but which has elements that I *have* observed with friends on cruises. Very much recommended.

This review of Uncharted Waters by Tammy L. Grace was originally written on January 2, 2023.

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#BlogTour: Sweet Home Alaska by Jennifer Snow

For this blog tour we’re looking at an excellent “book one” for a new series after having had a couple of teases in prior works by the author. For this blog tour we’re looking at Sweet Home Alaska by Jennifer Snow.

Here’s what I had to say on Goodreads:

Excellent Multi-Layered “Series Starter”. After having had a back-door pilot in Alaska Dreams, where the couple traveled down to Port Serenity (our town in this book) to work with the Coast Guard (one of our main groups here, and one who has a direct connection in a secondary character in our unit here) to shoot a movie (which is then watched in one scene in this book) and a lead-in novella in Love On The Coast that explicitly introduces our town and some of its residents and history (and whose couple – and story – is summarized in this book)… we finally get into a proper Book 1 for this new spin-off series from Snow’s semi-long running (6 books or so at this time) Wild Alaska series.

And it absolutely fires on all cylinders. You’ve got a couple of tense Coast Guard rescues in the cold Alaskan waters where our new heroine learns to trust herself. You’ve got the tragic backstory of high school sweethearts who split due to several misunderstandings/ secrets. For the “sweet” / “clean” crowd… eh, you’ve got some pretty dang intense sex scenes, both penetrative and not – and not a dang one of them “fade to black” / “behind closed doors”. There’s enough drama in the book to elevate it above “bubble gum pop” level romance, without it being *too* burdening – and thus it is still a solid escape (and a longer-ish one at near 400 pages) for those who may need to escape the “real” world for a bit. It also happens to be a solid introduction to the author’s overall storytelling style for those who may be new to her. Very much recommended.

After the jump, an excerpt from the book followed by the “publisher details” – book description, author bio, and social media and buy links.
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