Summer on Honeysuckle Ridge

Despite a charmingly quirky heroine, the love story of Mason’s first Highland Falls romance (after the Harmony Harbor series) is obscured by a rushed, confusing tangle of competing subplots. Los Angeles YouTube star Abby Everhart is left penniless by a nasty divorce, so she’s both surprised and grateful when she inherits a farmhouse in Highland Falls, N.C., from a great aunt she never met. She and her Yorkshire terrier meet army veteran Hunter Mackenzie upon arrival and learn that he cared for Amy’s aunt in her dying days and inherited half the farm. Hunter agrees to help Abby fix up the house to put it on the market if it means the chatty, klutzy city girl will move out, allowing him to return to his brooding, solitary lifestyle. Over the course of a summer, Abby befriends a vast cast of townspeople, starts a tour company that throws Outlander-inspired events, and coaxes Hunter out of his shell and into her arms. The large cast offers plenty of potential for future installments, but it becomes difficult to track who’s who and distracts from the mismatched central couple. Readers will be disappointed. Agent: Pamela Harty, The Knight Agency. (June)