by Audrey Wick from the August 26, 2024 issue
Tagline: As Becca settles into her tropical vacation, she meets a surprise companion who makes her getaway all the sweeter.
Off the Cuff Observations: I'm behind on blogging again, so to try to catch up, I sometimes just record my thoughts as I read the story. So, here goes. :)
It's a vacation story. Those are always tricky because you have to get the reader to believe in the coincidence that two people who hit it off on vacation happen to live in the same town. But that may not be the case here.
She's caring for aging parents. Boy, do I feel that. My mom has dementia and it's hard to watch the slow but inevitable decline. Harder, though, for my sister and her husband, who moved in with her.
Of course she's reading romance! I think it's practically a given that a heroine in a Woman's World story is a romance reader. LOL
I like this sentence:
He winked, a playful gleam from his dreamy blue eyes energizing the space between them.
It's "electricity" without a too-intimate touch. Perfect.
Okay, I've already sped to the end of the story. Interesting. I really liked the descriptions of the setting. Wick really painted the tropical scene well. But it's curious that the ending is, well, so open-ended. Like I mentioned at the beginning, where do the two vacationers go from there? Maybe he lives on one coast and she lives on the other... I guess we just have to trust that they will go on the sunset cruise and just see what happens. This is a definite departure from the norm for Woman's World stories. I'll be keeping an eye out for more stories with ambiguous HEAs.
Photo by James via Flickr CC License
