Chelsea Enright inherits her late grandmother Brooke's cottage in the Adirondacks and with it a secret diary and some photographs. The diary holds the clue as to why her grandmother closed the cottage 60 years ago and never returned to live there. When Chelsea goes up to the cottage, she meets her neighbour Dr. Brandon Yale and decides to spend the rest of the summer there as she discovers her grandmother's story.

The premise of this book is good: long-buried family secrets, a summer cottage, romance. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a melodramatic over-drawn tale that failed to move me. Sensitive as I am, I couldn't get into this book. It dragged, with characters that lacked depth and an unexciting predictable plot. I finished it only because I thought maybe the ending was going to be revelatory. Not at all. Everything is tied up too neatly in the end too. The whole thing was unrealistic, from the theatrical reactions of the characters to the men who shed tears quicker than my sister's toddler.

I think better editing was in order for this book. The overuse of ellipses, unrealistic dialogue and writing that left nothing to the imagination became irritating after a while. The setting was great, though. My family has spent summers in lakeside cottages and it is special. The author did manage to capture that feeling and I did enjoy some of the scenes, such as when Chelsea and Brandon flew over the lake in his floatplane.

I guess some would consider this novel a sweet romance, and if you like that kind of romance along with a story of a grandmother's secret hidden in a diary, and you are willing to disregard all the things that irked me, then you might just enjoy this book a whole lot more than I did.

Note: This book is rated P = profanity, for a few religious expletives.

Disclosure: Thanks to William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for sending me this book for review. I was not compensated in any other way, nor told how to rate or review this product.

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