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Serendipity by the Sea (The Gull Island Series, Book 1)

By: Jennifer Vido
Publisher: Wild Rose Press
Publication Date: April 12, 2023
ISBN: 978-1509247851
Reviewed by: Barbara Bamberger Scott
Review Date: June 15, 2023

Author Jennifer Vido offers a dreamy setting – a small island off the coast of South Carolina – where a man and woman will meet after years of disconnection and make life-changing decisions together - and separately, in her newest book, Serendipity by the Sea, the first in her new Gull Island series.

Cate is a strong, intelligent young woman involved in a job that promises excitement with every change in the weather, as she greets and helps accommodate island visitors at Gull Island’s Guest Center. But under her vibrant customer service skills lies a broken heart and a reluctance to find someone to mend it. Then one fine day, Knox appears. He was the high school sweetheart who left Cate to find excitement and career chances in the big city. He has succeeded, becoming a photographer specializing in natural settings, making a name for himself and still seeking upward trajectories. But his favorite uncle, Charlie, a Gull Island inhabitant, is languishing in poor health and needs a caregiver, so Knox compassionately steps in. He and Cate exchange greetings and both are struck with the depth of sentiment that the cautious reunion arouses. Exploring the island, delving into its small industries and political themes, Knox begins to wonder if he’d made the right decision years before, even as his efforts to redevelop a connection with Cate are stymied by her emotional outpouring of long-nursed heart wounds. Both Cate and Knox are offered chances for a better financial future and greater prestige – will that send them soaring in different directions yet again?

The book’s author, Jennifer Vido, has a sensitivity for the delicious and sometimes derelict directions that love can take, able to breathe life into her two central characters as they experiment with reviving their youthful, seemingly lost, affections. Vido, with her writer’s gifts of dialogue, character development and description, sets the scene beautifully – as what could be more conducive to a romantic reconciliation than the Lowcountry’s Gull Island, with its “miles of sandy beaches…and the most picturesque sunsets on the East Coast”? The clouds and dark moments as Cate and Knox struggle with old memories are well contrasted with the sunny days that both know could be ahead – if the right decision is made.

Quill says: Jennifer Vido’s readers will know that she has a genuine feeling for romance in all its twists and turns, following Cate and Knox as they brave the waves and find comfort on the shores of a complicated relationship in the first book in her new Gulf Island series, Serendipity by the Sea.

For more information on Serendipity by the Sea (The Gull Island Series Book 1), please visit the author's website at: www.jennifervido.com/