MaryAnn W

As a sports fan, I often listen to Mike Greenberg's sports talk show, "Mike and Mike in the Morning" and so I was curious to see how he tackled fiction that seemed pretty obviously "chick lit." Indeed, the first part of the book recalls the stories that as a teenager I used to read in women's magazines: impossibly beautiful, intelligent, accomplished women looking for love in all the wrong places. An interesting – if a bit odd – thread that runs through the three women's lives in this story is their reliance on sports and personal fitness to cope with emotional adversity. Their lives intersect in the second part of the book, expressed in epistolary style through email posts, and the plot gains a realistic measure of pathos. This story was surprisingly vivid and engaging, despite the obvious clichés, and often very funny. A quick read with few plot surprises.

This book begins with such promise! The first section is beautifully detailed with evocative descriptions of wild landscape and harsh weather; the author clearly has a gift for this kind of writing. However, her attention to detail slows down the story and overloads the narrative with details about the workings of a lighthouse that were interesting at first but ultimately became rather tiresome. The characters are engaging but not complex; a more nuanced exploration of the characters would have made the plot less predictable. The book is a good choice for those who like more romance than drama but for me, it was too much of a tearjerker.