The New York Times bestselling author of An Early Wake returns to Ireland where Sullivan’s Pub owner Maura Donovan gets mixed up with smugglers.
After calling Ireland home for six months, Boston expat Maura Donovan still has a lot to learn about Irish ways—and Sullivan’s Pub is her classroom. Maura didn’t only inherit a business, she inherited a tight-knit community. And when a tragedy strikes, it’s the talk of the pub. A local farmer, out for a stroll on the beach with his young son, has mysteriously disappeared. Did he drown? Kill himself? The child can say only that he saw a boat.
Everyone from the local gardai to the Coast Guard is scouring the Cork coast, but when a body is finally brought ashore, it’s the wrong man. An accidental drowning or something more sinister? Trusting the words of the boy and listening to the suspicions of her employee Mick that the missing farmer might have run afoul of smugglers, Maura decides to investigate the deserted coves and isolated inlets for herself. But this time she may be getting in over her head...
This would've easily been a 5 star book if not for 2 things: endless repetition of all the story's details every couple of pages and the ridiculous rescue plot.
This series has always had a lot of internal dialogue to it, but it just seemed to make this book drag. It added nothing to the story and felt like filler. In fact, I skipped 2 or 3 chapters in the middle because the story just wasn't moving along.
The plot to rescue the missing farmer nearly made me stop reading the book. Seriously? As a plot device, it stinks. Just implausible and ridiculous.
Overall, not a terrible book, but this series definitely needs to move a few plot lines forward (can we do away with the the whole Mick/Sean/Clueless Maura thing now, please??)
Reading updates
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Started reading
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11 March, 2016:
Finished reading
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11 March, 2016:
Reviewed