Brand new Jenny Holiday series count me in!

I absolutely adored this book. This is a second chance romance set in a quirky lake town in Canada, It reminded me of watching Gilmore Girls with it's characters. Loved all of the mermaid references and home improvement.

I really loved the romance and that they had to work to get together.,

One thing for sure I am looking forward to reading book 2 in the series. I want Jake's book now!

After the death of her beloved Aunt leaves librarian Eve in ownership of the falling apart Mermaid Inn, she must return to the the place she once loved but left forever after her high school sweetheart destroyed her heart. Now the police chief and sporting a stupid stupid beard that Eve absolutely does not like, not one bit, Sawyer Collins is an inescapable nuisance who also seems to be doing everything in his power to make sure Eve is happy, despite what he did all those years ago.

A slow burn romance full of heart that pays off on steam after making you die for it, this is a great series starter from Jenny Holiday! I cannot wait for more as I delighted in all the secondary characters. I especially enjoyed watching Eve and Sawyer learn to talk to one another and communicate their desires. Super sexy and I adore a second-chance romance. This one is done quite well, and Sawyer's big mistake is thoroughly explored and the grovel fits the crime.

Also! I am in the mentions of this book! I was so lucky to help Jenny just a bit, talking about library jobs! Thank you Jenny.

I reviewed a free copy from the publisher. Thank you!

I'll admit, one of the main reasons I chose to read this story is because of the cover. How beautiful is it? Completely eye catching! But then I dove into the story and got lost in the pages. This is an amazing second chance romance. I felt entwined with the characters and I felt like I met a new set of friends. I loved everything about it honestly, and hope the authors writes many more books in the series! Highly recommended!

Mermaid Inn by Jenny Holiday offers readers a plethora of romance brilliance all in one book—from small town matchmakers and anti- festivals to murder mystery plays and an inn filled with mermaid memorabilia. Jenny Holiday’s newest novel follows the story of Eve and Sawyer as they meet back up after years apart. When Eve comes back to the small town to see to the inn her aunt has left in her will—she must confront her feelings for Sawyer and what happened in their past. Mermaid Inn is a second chance romance with all of the quirks, banter, romance, and loveliness that readers will expect from a Jenny Holiday novel.

The life of librarian and list maker extraordinaire, Eve Abbott, has just taken quite a twist. Her great-aunt Lucille, who was the epitome of life twists, has left the Mermaid Inn in Moonflower Bay to Eve with the stipulation that Eve can’t sell the inn for a year. Not only does this get in the way of Eve acquiring her dream job, but staying in this small town for a year absolutely cannot happen. How will she manage to avoid “He Who Shall Not Be Named," the guy who broke her eighteen-year-old heart? Not only is he still in town, but he's the police chief and an integral part of the town's fabric.

Holiday does it again with this first book in a new small-town romance series, creating a vivid, lively, inviting setting in which the reader finds herself effortlessly immersed. With quirky, colorful secondary characters and a set of spry, meddling, geriatric matchmakers, you'll find yourself falling in love and desperately wanting more of this small-town charm. And I dare you not to fall for Sawyer, a guy whose need to care, protect and do the right thing is only overshadowed by his big heart and his love for his Evie.

If you like small-town romance with unforgettable, charming characters, a swoon-worthy hero, and a heroine who learns that family can be a place and home is the people who reside in her heart, you’ll adore this wonderful, humorous, heart-warming story. Great-aunt Lucille is right, life can get twisty, but the best things are often unexpected and those twists can lead to the most rewarding life.

“If you go to the beach under a full moon and throw a moonflower into the water and make a wish , it will come true.”

Eve left this town with a broken heart and has never returned , until her aunt leaves her the INN! Last place Eve wants to be is in this town. Last person she wants to run into , is actually the second person she runs into and the cause of her broken heart, Sawyer .
He had his reasons, Will she stick around long enough to hear them?

I loved this book, the town , the people and I want more!!! It’s where you’ll want to return again and again.
This is my first book by this author and definitely not my last !

Mermaid Inn is a witty, small-town second chance romance that I absolutely adored. It has a charming lakeside town setting, interesting characters, humor, and heart. Eve and Sawyer were childhood sweethearts, but Sawyer betrayed Eve and broke her heart ten years ago. Eve left Moonflower Bay and didn't return for ten years until she inherited her beloved aunt's Inn. Now she is back in Moonflower Bay, she can't escape Sawyer, who is the town's police chief. Sawyer wants to make amends with Eve and their chemistry is as strong as it was when they were teenagers, but will Eve be able to forgive Sawyer for his betrayal? Second chance romance is my favorite trope and Jenny Holiday nailed it! I cannot wait to read more books set in Moonflower Bay.

Sometimes you read a book that is just so perfect for the reading mood that you are in. For me, this book struck all the right notes, a lovely, hopeful romance with small-town quirkiness and charm to start my 2020 reading off right! I'm a fan of Jenny Holiday's anyway but this book is definitely at the top of my favorites list. Sawyer was the very definition of a caretaker alpha, my favorite kind of hero. Strong, protective (sometimes too much so), caring, compassionate, and willing to sacrifice anything to take care of the people he loves. Eve is kind, smart, open, and a bit too wedded to her current life plan to see what's in front of her but she grows and changes of the course of the book and gains the power to listen to and articulate her true wants.

The basic plot is that Eve's beloved aunt has passed away recently and left Eve her quirky, rather run down inn in a small town on Lake Huron, a few hours from Toronto. Eve has a load of student debt and is angling for a promotion to a collections specialist in her library system in Toronto, so she plans to sell the inn quickly and get out of the small town where she spent her summers as a child, and where her first love, Sawyer, now the town police chief, broke her heart at age 18. Her bad memories have overwhelmed and buried all of the good ones to the point where she hasn't been back for 10 yrs. The only problem is that Lucille's will specifies that Eve must live in the inn for a year before she can sell it. Over the course of the year, she is slowly reabsorbed into the town's rhythms and rediscovers her strong feelings for Sawyer as well as making new friends and learning to communicate what she wants. Although Eve was in her late 20's, this almost felt like a coming of age story, not in the sense that Eve acts immaturely (she doesn't) but in the sense that although she's already accomplished a lot professionally, she still has a lot of personal growing to do. There is (of course) a set up for the next few books, presumably with Sawyer's close friends as heroes, and I will be looking forward to all of them.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book from Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Eve Abbott has returned to Moonflower Bay after being away for the past decade. Eve would visit every summer when she was younger and stay with her great-aunt Lucille. She fell in love with the charming town and a boy named Sawyer too. After having her heart broken by Sawyer, Eve left and hasn't been back. She now finds herself the owner of the Mermaid Inn and doesn't quite know how she feels about the town and all of the people in it - specifically the Chief of police Sawyer.

I love a second chance romance and Eve and Sawyer had such great chemistry. The memories of the town and memories of Sawyer are interwoven so tightly in Eve's mind that she is having a hard separating the two. I felt so deeply for both of these characters. They each had their own reasons for acting the way that they did, but missed it out on so much time together.

It did take me a bit to really get into the book, but I feel that sometimes that happens when an author is setting up the characters and plot for a series. The secondary characters were well rounded and added so much to this wonderful story. I'm already looking forward to the next book in the series!

I received a complimentary advance title of this book from the publisher.

Mermaid Inn is a fantastic start to Jenny Holiday’s new Matchmaker Bay series. This slow burn, second chance romance is its own perfect getaway in a few hundred pages.

Eve is a Toronto librarian who inherited her aunt’s Mermaid Inn, an adorable lodging in a small town on the Ontario shore of Lake Huron. Eve stayed with her aunt during the summers growing up, but stopped coming to visit after Sawyer broke her heart before she went to college. Ten years later, Sawyer is the police chief of their quaint town and has never gotten over Eve. Eve’s plan is to sell the run down inn as soon as she can, but her aunt included a clause in her will that says Eve must wait a year before she can sell. As these things happen in books, Eve takes a leave of absence from her job in order to renovate the inn and increase its sale value.

Naturally, romance ensues. One of the many things I loved about this book is the way each and every character is as well developed as our heroine. The town residents are hilarious, but each stands out on their own without being stereotypical. The reader can’t help but cheer on Eve and Sawyer as they take their time becoming reacquainted. I usually get impatient with a book that takes a long time to draw out the slow burn, but Holiday’s sense of timing is spot on. The author’s sense of quaint vs hilarious works overtime to make Mermaid Inn impossible to put down. And, fans of her other romance novels will cheer yet another vital scene with grilled cheese.

I adored Mermaid Inn and can’t wait to see what happens next in Matchmaker Bay.

It's true that Jenny Holiday's latest has a very G-rated contemporary fic cover. It rolls along in PG/PG-13 territory for a good while, this second chance, friends-to-lovers romance eventually takes a hard left into R territory, and I couldn't be happier.

Eve returns to her hometown near Lake Huron to renovate and sell the inn her aunt left her. Of all the things she doesn't want to deal with, top of the list is seeing Sawyer, the high school boyfriend who shattered her heart, and is now the town's police chief.

It all sounds small town standard, but Mermaid Inn delivers a moving backstory about how good intentions can sometimes go so wrong. Plus, hey, a sexy cinnamon roll hero.

Meddling but well-meaning townspeople and a friend group help Sawyer and Evie make their way back to each other. Both Sawyer and Eve have a lot to work through when it comes to past hurts, but Mermaid Inn is emotional without being angsty. It's a solid start to the series. But I have to admit, I’m EVEN MORE interested in Sawyer’s buddy Jake and his story.

Eve Abbott and Sawyer Collins are about to get a second chance at love. Oh, I know this is an often-used trope, but no worries, Jenny Holiday delivers this to readers with excellent writing, witty dialogue and a delightful conclusion.

Eve is back in Matchmaker Bay. She is a librarian with career aspirations and is targeted on a dream job, so she hopes to sort out the reason why her Aunt Lucille left her the Mermaid Inn. Unfortunately, Eve realize that it needed a lot of renovations and I hope was to get the major issues taken care of and put this thing on the market so that she can get back into her life. What is she does not like is the fact that she is going to be forced to face her first love Sawyer and the fact that he broke her heart isn’t that she will never forget.

Sawyer is none too pleased to see Eve back in town. He is a good man through and through and he has as it turns out very good reason for why he let Eve go all those years ago. Running into each other they find that spending time together is makes it clear that they still have something between them. But Sawyer can never let even know why he did what he did all those years ago.

As serious as this sounds, Mermaid Inn is threaded with humor throughout and it made for a very good read. The path to love in this romance was a pleasant one and a very nice journey. The fact that the town is called Matchmaker Bay, lends to the fact that there is indeed a plot that neither Eve nor Sawyer could ignore. The town is a place where everybody minds everybody else’s business. This was a fun and enjoyable story and I was glad that I had the opportunity to read it.

This is the first book in a new series and I am more than eager to read the following books. As this is my second novel by Jenny Holiday I am realizing that she could easily become a favorite.

Many thanks to Forever and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

Sweet Small Town Hope & Romance

Mermaid Inn is a sweet small-town, second-chance romance, and the beginning of a new series by Jenny Holiday. Meet Eve, our heroine who’s returning to Moonflower Bay following the death of her great-aunt Lucille. She’s found out she’s inherited her aunt’s Mermaid Inn – but it comes with a catch. Eve must stay in town and live at the Inn for a year before she’s allowed to sell it. The last thing Eve wants to do is leave Toronto and her promising career path to take up residence in the town where she lost her heart to summer love at age 18. Especially since the break-er not only still lives there, but is now the Chief of Police.

The second-chance romance trope rarely lets me down, and this book is no exception. Holiday paints a vivid picture of this charming town and it’s inhabitants with her wonderful storytelling, bringing laughter, tears, frustration and cheers to our slow-burn smitten, romance-loving hearts. Sometimes the best things in life come to us when we’re busy making other plans! I enjoyed the timing and build up to the HEA; it didn’t feel rushed. After everything these two went through in their younger years, jumping right back to a relationship would not seem very natural.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. Holiday has set us up for more Moonflower Bay books in the future, and I’m looking forward to checking out what else the meddling townspeople have in store for us and our future H&h.