We adore Jill Shalvis here at Fiction Fare and we are so excited for Jill’s newest release Rainy Day Friends! We are excited to be a part of the blog tour, but before we share our thoughts, we want to tell you all about the book!
Rainy Day Friends by Jill Shalvis (Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads)Also by this author: One in a Million, Still the One, Second Chance Summer, My Kind of Wonderful, Sweet Little Lies, The Good Luck Sister, Playing For Keeps: Heartbreaker Bay
Published by HarperCollins on June 19th 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Contemporary Women, Fiction, General, Romance
Pages: 384
Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband’s death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers she isn’t the only one grieving his sudden passing. A serial adulterer, he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife.
Rocked by the infidelity, Lanie is left to grapple with searing questions. How could she be so wrong about a man she thought she knew better than anyone? Will she ever be able to trust another person? Can she even trust herself?
Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. At first, she feels like an outsider among the boisterous Capriottis. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Especially Mark Capriotti, a gruffly handsome Air Force veteran turned deputy sheriff who manages to wind his way into Lanie’s cold, broken heart—along with the rest of the clan.
Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Brown changes all that. The fresh-faced twenty-one-year old seems as sweet as they come…until her dark secrets come to light—secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie’s only just begun to build.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Anxiety Girl, able to jump to the worst conclusion in a single bound!
Most of the time Karma was a bitch, but every once in awhile she could be surprisingly nice, even kind. Lanie Jacobs, way past overdue for both of those things, told herself this was her time. Seize the day and all that, and drawing a deep breath, she exited the highway at Wildstone.
The old wild-west California town was nestled in the rolling hills between the Pacific Coast and wine/ranching country. She’d actually grown up not too far from here, though it felt like a lifetime ago. The road was narrow and curvy, and since it’d rained earlier, she added tricky and slick to her growing list of issues. She was already white-knuckling a sharp turn when a kamikaze squirrel darted into her lane, causing her to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic before remembering the rules of country driving.
Never leave your lane; not for weather, animals, or even God himself.
Luckily the squirrel reversed direction, but before she could relax a trio of deer bounded across the road. “Run, Bambi,” she cried, hitting her brakes, and by the skin of their collective teeth, they all missed each other.
Sweating, nerves sizzling like live wires, she finally turned onto Capriotti Lane and parked as she’d been instructed.
It took a moment for her pulse to come down from stroke level. She’d been taught anti-anxiety techniques, but she’d never quite figured out how to make any of them work while in the actual throes of an anxiety attack.
It’s all good she told herself but because she wasn’t buying what she was selling, she had to force herself out of the car like she was a five year old starting kindergarten instead of being thirty and simply facing a brand new job. Given all she’d been through, this should be easy, even fun. But sometimes adulthood felt like the vet’s office and she was the dog excited for the car ride — only to find out the real destination.
Shaking her head, she strode across the parking lot. It was April, which meant the rolling hills to the east were green and lush and the Pacific Ocean to the west looked like a surfer’s dream, all of it so gorgeous it could’ve been a postcard. A beautiful smoke screen over her not-so-beautiful past. The air was scented like a really expensive sea-and-earth candle, though all Lanie could smell was her forgotten hopes and dreams. With wood chips crunching under her shoes, she headed through the entrance beneath which was a huge wooden sign that read:
Capriotti Winery, from our fields to your table…
Her heart sped up. Nerves, of course, the bane of her existence. But after a very crappy few years, she was changing her path. For once in her godforsaken life, something was going to work out for her. This was going to work out for her.
She was grimly determined.
Jaime’s Thoughts
I love this new family that Shalvis is introducing us to! I adore the Capriotti’s and the dynamics with all the different family members! Rainy Day Friends is the second book in the series, but these are companion books and you could definitely read this without reading the first…but why would you?!?
Lainie Jacobs is in search of a new start. After her husband’s sudden death reveals a betrayal of the worst kind, she has no idea what to do. So she packs her stuff, leaves town, and takes a temporary contract working for the Capriotti family. From the very first meeting though, she’s overwhelmed by huge family, but in a good way, and they take her under their wing and welcome her with open arms, quickly making her feel like part of the family. Especially Mark…
Mark is dealing with the stresses of being a single father. As the local Deputy Sheriff he already has a lot on his plate, but throw in two precocious girls, and he doesn’t have a second to himself. And he certainly doesn’t have time for a relationship, but he can’t seem to turn off his attraction to Lainie.
Then River Brown shows up and the Caprotti clan can’t help but welcome her as they had Lainie. Only River isn’t quite straightforward with her intentions when she arrives, and when Lainie finds out who she is and what she wants… well it certainly puts a wrench in any progress she might have made since she arrived.
Shalvis is a master at crafting complicated relationships, and this is certainly that, but what I wasn’t expecting while reading was to find myself cheering for every one of the characters… even the ones I wasn’t expecting to.
Shalvis is a contemporary romance master and if you haven’t yet read her books, I highly recommend anything and everything she writes. This story is filled with complicated characters, tons of swoons and a family you’ll wish you could join around the lunch table.
Thank you to the publisher for providing a copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
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