Lake Break: Second Chance Romance Edition

Carley Fortune's Meet Me at the Lake is a love story as sweet as its cover art's strawberry sky.  Ten years ago, fresh-out-of-college Fern Brookbanks and Will Baxter met and spent one magical day in Toronto.  Will's an overalls-and-pink-shoelaces-wearing artist, and Fern's a thrift shop-enshrouded music snob.  Their random meanderings through parks and bars read like a rain-misted indie flick. They tell each other everything, their chemistry crackling against the clock.  Their bond is electric yet tender, ignited by the kind of jaded innocence that burns only when you're in your early twenties.  So when it ends, it's bittersweet, with Fern and Will planning to meet at Fern's family's resort in a year.  They go their separate ways, but Fern never forgets Will.  On the appointed day, she dons an inside-joke green bathing suit and waits for him on the dock.  But Will never comes.

Now in her early thirties, Fern is back at the lake.  Her charismatic mother has died in a car accident, and she's dealing with her grief as she learns how to run the resort.  Her first love of an ex-boyfriend works there too, making everything even more complicated.  Then a man in a suit checks in, and her world cracks open.  Because it's Will.

The plot goes back and forth between the present and that day in Toronto, which as a fan of flashbacks, I love.  Maybe it's because I'm a reminiscer myself, but I think that glimpses into the past give stories depth.  I enjoyed reading about young Fern and Will so much that I was sometimes disappointed to return to the present!  That said, thirtysomething Fern weathers her own unique emotional landscape, getting to know her mother all over again by reading her diaries.  And when Will arrives, he carries more baggage than his suitcase suggests.  As the two reconnect, they learn how much they've changed -- and how much they haven't.  Because somewhere deep down beneath the years and the pain, they're still those two kids in Toronto.            

So if someone asks you to meet them at the lake, make sure you show up!  

Or don't.  

Great romances sometimes bloom best in trouble.