I read The Little Bookstore on Heart Lake Lane by Sarah Robinson while on a cruise of South America. I enjoyed the experience of reading it on our cabin’s balcony at the start of the cruise, yet as we sailed further south all the way to Cape Horn, the temperatures dipped to as low as 9°C and it was too cold to read outdoors.
Rosie Dean owns a bookstore and is struggling with her business. She is a single mother of eight-year-old twins Becca and Zander. Visiting Heart Lake is widower Evan Nowak, father of nine-year-old Tess. The overwhelming number of romances I have read have had some connection to Christmas, so this one was different in that regard. I chose it because of its ostensible bookstore theme, but Robinson seems to have treated book retail as an afterthought.
The book contained only 223 pages so that means a lot of action has to happen in a short period of time, and in the world of romance that means Evan is going out with Rosie in one chapter and dreaming of marriage in the next. I get it that one has to suspend belief and live in a fantasyland while reading some romances yet this one saw me shaking my head and talking out loud far more often than at any time while reading even the worst of my past Christmas novels. I did not enjoy this book and will happily leave it behind in the ship’s library.
Robinson did not develop any of her characters to the point where I could feel anything for them. For one, there are far too many in such a short novel. Aside from Rosie, Evan and their three kids, we have Rosie and Evan’s parents, Rosie’s groupie fling ex who fathered her children, Rosie’s brother and sister-in-law, Rosie’s gay coworker, her other friends, and even Evan’s late wife Layla who all have something to say, even if it’s from beyond the grave. I could not accept anything the kids were saying, at least from the girls anyway, as Robinson portrayed Becca and Tess as precocious Confucius clones spouting off wisdom to their clueless parents. While both Rosie and Evan struggle with their new relationship, take it from an omniscient child to know the real deal who can steer her parent in the right direction. At least Zander came off as a normal boy more interested in cookies and play than in understanding the psychology of grief. What nine-year-old (Tess) would ever say this to her father:
“The only thing you ever say about her is that she died—or passed away. Some diplomatic answer that doesn’t say anything about her at all—not even her name. We don’t talk about her. It’s like she never existed.”
In terms of language, both parents overused the term kiddo when speaking to their own children. It ceased to be a term of endearment and quickly became an annoyance to see that word again in an exchange between parent and child. I also found the foul language, used as intensifiers, to be insincere and ineffectual. Robinson was trying too hard to inject some real emotion into the story but all the damns she inserted seemed trite, such as:
“He held her against him, kissing her again and again in small pecks. ‘We’re a whole damn family now.’”
I was puzzled when Evan was first introduced because the surname he used was Nowak, while the blurb on the back cover named him Evan Mills. I thought that a storyline would later develop where he changed his name to Mills, but as the book progressed and that plotline didn’t seem likely, I came to the realization that Mills was an editing error not corrected when it came to the final printing.
This was a light read, just what I wanted for a cruise, but I did not enjoy it. The storyline and characters were so undeveloped that I couldn’t accept any of it. How could Rosie and Evan fall in love so fast? The answer: page count. I could see the book would come to an end soon. They’d better get busy. And what’s with the author photo on the back and inside cover? Could Robinson please look up at the camera?