Sunday, August 26, 2012

Book Review: Love Finds You In Mackinac Island, Michigan


Author: Melanie Dobson
Publication Date: July 1, 2012
Publisher: Summerside Press
Series: Love Finds You

It's the height of the Gilded Age, but Elena Bissette's family has lost most of its fortune. The Bissettes still own a home on fashionable Mackinac Island, and they spend summers there in hopes of introducing Elena to a wealthy suitor. Quickly tiring of the extravagant balls at the Grand Hotel, she spends her days walking along the island's rugged coastline. There she meets Chase, a young fisherman who invites her to watch the ships from an abandoned lighthouse. The two begin to meet there in secret, hoping to solve a decades-old mystery. Meanwhile, Elena's mother contrives introductions between Elena and the island's most eligible bachelor, an elusive millionaire named Chester Darrington. When Elena's two worlds unexpectedly collide, she will be in for the surprise of her life.


 
 
Mackinac Island looks like a place that I desperately want to be. My favorite flower and the flower that I want to use in my wedding is a hydrangea, which is beautifully adorning the front cover of this book. The landscape is beautiful and it looks to be the perfect place to have a vacation home. This is the kind of book that displays the “summer read” feel, and many dedicated readers know what I mean! And not to mention this is actually a real place in Michigan, how cool is that?!!

 
 
Here is historical fiction that is well written. Have you ever read a book and it seems like the words just flow? Like they may even flow off the page, that’s how smooth they are? Please allow Melanie Dobson to do just that for you. I have never been so entranced by the description of any certain setting until I began to read about Mackinac Island, Michigan. What beautiful and not too overly done descriptions! I honestly got caught up in a daydream. This was the first book that I had read by this author only because this is the first that I have heard of her!
 
Elena Bissette is the perfect rebel without a cause heroine. She wants nothing to do with love, marriage, or even finding a man to have all of this with. During this time period those three things listed above are pretty inevitable for most women. Elena loves her mother, but constantly defies her wishes for Elena to be betrothed to Chester Darrington by summer’s end. I loved Elena from the first time that she snuck out her bedroom window!!
 
A lighthouse played a huge part in this story and it was so romantic and fit like a puzzle piece in all the right areas. Elena met a stranger one night at this lighthouse that she adored so much and it was where their love and connection started to form and develop. Lighthouses are such majestic structures and this one was no different. Just how a lighthouse brings in lost ships or ships looking for land, it brought Elena in and helped her decide who and what she wanted to be.
 
Even though the plot was somewhat predictable as most romantic ones are, I still believe that this book was a nice little escape for me for a few days. The perfect book to end summer with!
 
***Many thanks to Litfuse Publicity and Summerside Press for providing a copy for review***








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