Sweet Home Alaska

Excellent Multi-Layered “Series Starter”. After having had a back-door pilot in Alaska Dreams, where the couple traveled down to Port Serenity (our town in this book) to work with the Coast Guard (one of our main groups here, and one who has a direct connection in a secondary character in our unit here) to shoot a movie (which is then watched in one scene in this book) and a lead-in novella in Love On The Coast that explicitly introduces our town and some of its residents and history (and whose couple - and story - is summarized in this book)... we finally get into a proper Book 1 for this new spin-off series from Snow's semi-long running (6 books or so at this time) Wild Alaska series.

And it absolutely fires on all cylinders. You've got a couple of tense Coast Guard rescues in the cold Alaskan waters where our new heroine learns to trust herself. You've got the tragic backstory of high school sweethearts who split due to several misunderstandings/ secrets. For the “sweet” / “clean” crowd... eh, you've got some pretty dang intense sex scenes, both penetrative and not - and not a dang one of them “fade to black” / “behind closed doors”. There's enough drama in the book to elevate it above “bubble gum pop” level romance, without it being too burdening - and thus it is still a solid escape (and a longer-ish one at near 400 pages) for those who may need to escape the “real” world for a bit. It also happens to be a solid introduction to the author's overall storytelling style for those who may be new to her. Very much recommended.