Sandy Gingras’s Paradise Girls features a broken engagement. A ruined vacation in paradise. One adorable little girl. The perfect recipe for the chance of a lifetime…

Mary Valley is in a funk. She’s a writer for home magazines, but she’s lost touch with what home means. Her life seems meaningless. The last house she wrote about was a gazillion-dollar mansion with a moat! Plus, she’s estranged from her daughter, CC and granddaughter, Larkin and mired in a dead-end relationship with her boss.

Daniel is a man adrift since his son Timmy was killed in Afghanistan. He’s living on a houseboat in Florida with Timmy’s three-legged dog, Tripod and taking tourists out on fishing charters. But his life is on the edge. He’s painting his houseboat black, and he can’t stop thinking about “getting lost at sea.”

When Mary’s boss tells her he’s spending Christmas with his ex, she books a trip with her family to The Low Key Inn, a hotel on the edge of the Everglades. But things go wrong from the get-go. CC bails out of the vacation, and Mary is stuck with an unhappy Larkin. The hotel is dated and down-on-its-luck, and perhaps its owner is a witch. Then Mary meets Daniel, casts a hook into his head and wrecks his boat.

This is the story of how wounded people can help each other heal, how lost people can help each other find their way home. How life can become a love story…

Review:

Sweet, heartwarming, and tender!

Paradise Girls is an optimistic, engaging novel that takes us into the lives of three main characters. Mary, a kind-hearted young grandmother who, after her recent breakup with the man she thought she would spend the rest of her life with, decides to embark on a little getaway to regroup and discover what she truly desires. Daniel, a divorced father who, after losing his only son in Afghanistan, decides to lead a simpler life involving a houseboat and his late son’s three-legged dog, Tripod. And Ollie, a widow who is just beginning to struggle with her love for a dilapidated inn and her need for something more.

The prose is sweet and reflective. The characters are caring, supportive, and generous. And the plot is a compelling tale of life, loss, family, friendship, generosity, self-discovery, support, consideration, happiness, taking chances, companionship, new love, and the intricacies of mother-daughter relationships.

Overall, Paradise Girls is a cosy, charming, uplifting debut by Gingras with its small-town charm, endearing characters, heartfelt storyline, and reminder of how important it is at any age to find that place that truly feels like home.

This book is available now.

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