I thought about giving this one 4 stars, but the mess with Zack and Rosie made me drop it one. Sorry, bickering couples are not my favorite thing to read about in romance novels. Another reason why I gave this one 3 stars, is that this one reads a bit like filler since you don't find out the resolution with a lot of things in this one until book #3, "311 Pelican Court". 

 

One thing you can say about these books is that there is not a lack of characters. In "204 Rosewood Lane" we turn to Grace Sherman and her family. Grace's husband Dan has been missing for 6 months and she finally decides to go through with divorcing him. She has her two daughters, Maryellen and Kelly to lean on. Also she has a potential love interest too. 

 

The good:

 

I liked seeing Grace become more sure of herself. From what we read about in book number one and here, she hasn't had a happy marriage. She also has managed to not shake the life out of her daughter Kelly who acts like a brat and her histrionics since her father has gone missing made me tired. 

 

Macomber does a good job with juggling multiple people. Besides Grace, we have her daughter Maryellen as the focus, her relationship with a man named Jon, Olivia, Jack, and Olivia's ex husband Stan, Olivia's daughter Justine and Seth, along with Jack's son Eric, and Rosie and Zach Cox with their two kids. As I said in one of my other reviews, Macomber always introduces the couple who will be the focus in the next book in the preceding one. This time it's going to be Rosie and Zach. Problem was that the whole book felt weighted down with their acrimony. 

 

Cedar Cove always feels lively and interesting and it feels like a real life place you can visit. 

The bad:

 

I thought the nonsense between Olivia and Jack dealing with her ex and his son was boring to read about. Just have a conversation and stop playing games. They are both in their early 50s and I didn't have any patience with it at all.

 

Maryellen and Jon, I could not get over Maryellen and what she decides to keep a secret. Those that know me remember that my two most loathed romance plot lines are love triangles and secret babies. So guess which one this is.

 

Rosie and Zach, good grief. I didn't know who I wanted to shake more. 

 

 

 

Rosie was acting like a martyr, but Zach acted like a throwback to the 1950s expecting a home cooked meal ready for him every night. Neither one of them really respected the duties the other one had during the day. And neither of them had any sense since they didn't seem to give their two kids chores which would help keep down the animosity about the cleanliness of the house and getting dinner together. 

 

The book ends pretty abruptly and you have to read the next book to finish up some of the story-lines. 

 

We get the continuation of Jack and Olivia in this one, but also Grace dealing with the disappearance of her husband, Dan.

 

Grace's life is turned upside down when she realizes that man she has been married to for 35 years has gone and she thinks to live a life with another woman. 

 

Grace's daughter Maryellen is trying her best to hide her pregnancy from the man she got pregnant by. And I outright disliked the married couple Zack and Rosie. Every time I came to anything dealing with them I practically booed. Things don't get much better when they become the focus of book #3. 

Some years after her alcoholic father dies, Sonny Blake (Rose McGowan), a psychologist with her own radio talk show, moves back into the family home on suburban Rosewood Lane. Her neighbors, she soon discovers, live in fear of the teenage lad who delivers their papers. This kid, Derek Barber, isn't a normal kid. He's not just psychotic, he's probably supernatural. And now he's after Sonny.

So -- demon paperboy.

Whatever possibilities were to be mined from the idea of a kid who holds an entire neighborhood hostage to his own evil, Victor Salva, who wrote and directed Rosewood Lane, tosses out like yesterday's news. All he's interested in is how far it's possible to stretch the viewer's credulity. The story is illogical, the characters are doltish, and it all leads exactly nowhere.

Yet I'll bet the trailer's not bad. Out of context, some of the scenes have the edge of a decent thriller. But that pesky script keeps getting in the way. Like when Sonny gets tired of having her house broken into and decides to do something about it, and buys a cat. Meow. Or when she calls the cops and a couple of dolts with badges show up. Or when a major character vanishes and we're supposed to pretend he never existed. You know, like that. Salva has talent, just not writing talent.

He also has a criminal record. The Jeepers Creepers director served 15 months of a 3-year sentence after pleading guilty to molesting the 12-year-old star of his 1989 movie Clownhouse -- crimes he evidently filmed. So here's a guy I'm sure many viewers would like to "ban" from their DVD shelves. Here's the problem, though. One, he served his sentence. Two, he claims to be reformed. And three, if you ban him, wouldn't you also have to ban Francis Ford Coppola, who not only helped finance Clownhouse, but who has continued to support Salva and his career ever since? Where's the line?

This is why I don't do the ban thing myself. The waters are too murky. Don't think so? Coppola, in Salva's defense, once said, "You have to remember, while this was a tragedy, that the difference in age between Victor and the boy was very small -- Victor was practically a child himself." Salva was 29 at the time.

However you manage your viewing, in this case, it will probably work out the same. Rosewood Lane is simply too absurd to rate a look.

Continuing my participation in my family’s group read of the Cedar Cove series, this is book #2. We pick up several storylines and characters introduced in 16 Lighthouse Road, still set in the bland, uniformly white middle class town of Cedar Cove. Descriptors of the setting are superficial, so my mind’s eye has conjured images of a theme park main street.  

I can’t bring myself to spend time on a full review, so I’m just archiving my thoughts as I progressed through the book. Again, on audio, competently read by Sandra Burr.

 

10/18/13          marked as:       currently-reading

 

10/19/13          Progress 20.0%

"’Tonight,’ he said, reminding himself that this could very well be the evening he lured Olivia into his bed... Still, he was a man in every sense of the word, and he'd like nothing better than to take their relationship to a physical level beyond kissing and cuddling.”

 

Ugh, like high schoolers, thinking of relationships in terms of progressive levels.

 

10/20/13          Progress 30.0%

Horrified to think that the judge who is responsible for life changing legal decisions welcomes her knitting busybody mother into her chambers to give her opinions on legal cases.

 

10/19/13          Progress 25.0%          

Grown women attending the high school football game. No mention of the game itself, just their socializing. Afterward, Olivia mopes that Jack hasn't called her all week. Evidently it doesn't occur to her that she can pick up the phone and see how he's doing with his son, rather than expecting him to be thinking about her during his own family crisis.

 

10/20/13          Progress 30.0%

Srsly why can't 4 "responsible" adults consider that maybe Eric could actually just get tested for fertility? One peek in a microscope would make all this drama unnecessary. Idiots.

 

10/21/13          Progress 50.0%

WTF is up with all these weirdo stalker men that keep forcing themselves on women who tell them to go away. Then the women give in to their overwhelming masculine forces? Do people find this romantic instead of disturbing?

 

10/25/13          Progress 80.0%          

The big reveal is no surprise. Nor is the tiresome morality behind it.

Married her first husband because they got pregnant – honestly does anyone in this town use birth control? – then he coerced her into getting an abortion, and she’s been tormented with a ruined life and psyche ever since. Yawn.

(spoiler show)

 

10/25/13          Progress 80.0%          

Again, characters behaving like they're in jr. high. Jack spends more time obsessing over whether Olivia's ex-husband is "interested" in her, as if she's a possession that he worries about being stolen rather than an intelligent, adult woman with agency.

 

10/25/13          Progress 90.0%

Jack: "What would you say if I confessed that I've fallen in love with you?" Olivia: "I'd say you sound like an insecure little boy and that you're trying to score points in some imaginary contest with my ex-husband." Jack: sulking

 

hahahahahahaha! Finally, one of them says exactly what I'm thinking!

 

10/25/13          marked as:       read

Glad to be done. Think I will give it a little rest before I start the next book. Though this is weirdly compelling in a wholly repellent sort of way, like spraying whipped cream directly in your mouth right out of the can.

The above map was taken from Debbie Macomber's web site and can be seen better at this hyperlink: Cedar Cove Map PDF. Warning: Don't study the red legend too carefully, there are spoilers there. In fact, maybe I should just tell you a few locations critical to the story. ➀ is Olivia Lockhart’s house. ➁ is Grace Sherman’s house. ➂ is the home of Zack and Rosie Cox, and ➃ is the bed and breakfast/home of Peggy and Bob Beldon. If you just click on the pic instead of the hyperlink, it should take you to a larger pic where the legend is still too blurry to read.

This is a review of the audio version of this book. The narrator, Sandra Burr, again does a wonderful job of bringing Ms. Macomber’s characters of Cedar Cove to life in this second book of the series. Sometimes it is difficult for a female to do the male voices, but Ms. Burr is great, putting a different inflection on each voice in a nice way and adding a touch of subtle humorous tone in the appropriate scenes.

There are various storylines in the book and a few of them are unresolved at the end; it is a small-town-life-romance-chick-lit-soap series, after all! Nevertheless, the good news is that librarian Grace Sherman gets answers to her husband of thirty-five years, Dan’s, disappearance that had us wondering in 16 Lighthouse Road. Grace has her new golden-retriever, sweet little “Buttercup” (isn’t that a Gilbert and Sullivan song?), and interested Cliff Harding to help her through it all.

We are updated on Justine and Seth Gunderson’s marriage weeks after their elopement, as well as on her grandmother, Charlotte.

The skittish divorcée, Maryellen Sherman, an art gallery manager and Grace’s oldest daughter, has a love interest in Joe Bowman, a chef by vocation and photographer by avocation. Oh what a tangled web we weave…and that’s all I’m going to say on that.

Judge Olivia Lockhart and newspaper reporter, Jack Griffin, are discovering their feelings for one another and their relationship. Both are worrying over the same thing - about not being with each other enough; however, they both have so much on their crowded plates. And they are about to get even more crowded when Jack’s previously estranged son, Eric, stops by…for how long? And how about Olivia's ex, Stan?

Then there is Zack and Rosie Cox, accountant and stay-at-home-mom respectively; married seventeen years, they are stumbling toward a split. Their arguments and disagreements are doozies, as both parties have valid points. Ms. Macomber does a wonderful job of conveying how an argument can spiral out of control. I had to wonder if DM is going to be a bit cliché here and lead us down the "neglected man" path - comforted by the ever efficient office assistant. I do like the author’s comment on the fact that once couples become financially secure, they can drift apart – pulled by varying interest and demands - and lose that sense of being partners against the world.

There is plenty of life going on in this little town: babies, secrets, arguments and romance. Some of it will have to be resolved in 311 Pelican Court. I'm ready for a listen!

16 Lighthouse Road204 Rosewood Lane311 Pelican Court