High-powered attorney Ellen Branford accidentally falls through an old dock in Beacon, Maine, and is swept into a dangerous riptide. She impulsively plants a passionate kiss on the handsome stranger who rescues her. Thus begins The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop and Cafe, a pleasing debut novel by Mary Simses.
Ellen's kiss becomes big local news, which complicates what was supposed to be a quick visit to this sleepy little New England town to deliver a letter from her recently deceased grandmother to an old flame. Along the way, she encounters a cast of locals whose small-town ways seem foreign to her, but slowly become more endearing--especially as Ellen, whose wedding is just three months away, keeps crossing paths with her rescuer. Might that kiss have sparked feelings between the two strangers? While Ellen vows to focus on the objective of her visit, and as she learns more about the choices that shaped her grandmother's life, including her past connection to a nearby blueberry farm, stark parallels begin to emerge between their situations. Ellen's romantic dilemma soon leads her to question her place in the world.
Simses has crafted a wholesome love story, infused with the pull-and-tug of romance and elements of mystery and enhanced by humble, low-key themes and conflicts. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines