So funny story – last week my family went to the coast and met up with my brother-in-law’s family. My boys were excited to play with their cousins that they hadn’t seen in forever (thanks Coronavirus) and I knew the perfect books to bring for a picture! My bro and sis-in-law looked at me like I was crazy taking pictures of books in the sand. Still finding sand in them 😅
But anyways- back to the books. These books are a perfect beach read. They’re sweet, funny and swoony. They can be read as stand alones and loosely connected all taking place in Huntington Beach, CA.
These are Christian Fiction mostly for LDS. There are LDS themes – going to church especially the single’s ward which is church especially for 18-31 years old crowd so they can meet other singles and get married 😂 Talks of mission – where someone serves 18-24 months sharing the gospel. Reading scripture, going to Institute which is like an extra Sunday school class that meets during the week.
“The List” is the book first and I remember seeing it on my college’s bookshelf as I’d walk through and the cover always drew my eye. In the book, Ashley has made a bucket list of things to accomplish in life especially before getting married. Because once you’re married you can’t do anything 😅 And spending the summer in a beach town, the hottest guy in the single’s ward catches her eye but she needs to stick to her list. Through an online social media she meets another guy (I love how a lot of Melanie Jacobson’s books have a theme of online dating). This includes a secret identity trope.
In the second book “Second Chances”, Louisa is setting up a ‘Bachelor’ type web series and getting young women to go on dates in the area. Honestly I can’t stand watching the tv reality shows but LOVE when books do it 😂 Louisa gets her once ex-boyfriend to be the Bachelor but it somehow is harder to watch him go on dates and to do the 1-1 interviews of how it’s going. They broke up but now Louisa can’t remember what the issue was and she gets swindled into being a contestant too!
The third in the series “Perfect Set” is about a hot volleyball player Kade (who you meet in the second book) and how there’s more to bring hot 😂 Kade stopped playing for a while but everything is hushed and no one knows why. Bree is a sports reporter which is already a tough job for women and Bree is set to break the story wide. This was a great enemies to lovers trope.
Have you read any of these? After reading Melanie’s first book “The List” and every book after that – I love them all!! – I can’t put them down and it encouraged me to want to write. Only took me a few years to finally start!
