PRAISE FOR WINTER STORMS:"
[Hilderbrand] expertly meshes everything together so that peace exists within each character and within the family dynamic...The queen of the romance novel is on top of her game, and she won't let you down."Vivian Payton, Book Reporter
"[A] dishy and readable conclusion to the Winter Street trilogy, with some luxurious details adding a touch of glamour to the drama."Booklist
"A series only works when the characters are worth following over the long haul, and Hilderbrand is a master, making for a satisfying conclusion to her Christmas at the Inn story."
Kirkus
PRAISE FOR WINTER STROLL:"
Hilderbrand juggles an ensemble cast and successfully weaves together many bittersweet story threads, tying up just enough of them to keep readers anticipating another sequel."
Kathleen Gerard, Shelf Awareness
PRAISE FOR WINTER STREET:"
A holiday package filled with humor, romance, and realism."Jocelyn McClurg
"The holidays wouldn't be complete without a little family dysfunction, and Hilderbrand writes it well."Library Journal
"Winter Street...[will] get you in the holiday mood."Kirkus Reviews
2018-08-21
When a Midwestern businessman is killed in a helicopter crash in the Caribbean, his wife and sons learn that he had a secret life.
The prodigious Hilderbrand (The Perfect Couple, 2018, etc.), author of high-style beach reads set on Nantucket, looks to a new island for her 22nd novel—St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. In an introduction, she explains that she has been going to St. John to write for years now and has finally decided to break the mold and share her love of the place in her fiction. However, the story begins in Iowa City, where magazine editor Irene Steele is ringing in the New Year alone, as her husband, Russell, is away on business. The next day she receives a call from a secretary named Marilyn Monroe informing her of his death, and before long, she and her sons, Baker and Cash, are on their way to St. John, a place they've barely heard of, where they will be escorted to a $15 million villa that Russell apparently owned and shared for years with an also-dead longtime lover, Rosie. They will meet Huck, Rosie's stepfather, and Ayers, her best friend, and develop romantic entanglements accordingly. As in the Nantucket novels, Hilderbrand delights in studding her fiction with the real, whether she's telling us what books the characters are reading—the new Curtis Sittenfeld, Lilac Girls, and The Hate U Give, among others—or sending them to actual shops, hotels, restaurants, and bars, with food and drink described in detail. We learn a great deal about the characters' pasts, but little light is shed on the shocking secret at the core of the book, and suspicions raised about Russ Steele's business dealings and the details of the helicopter crash are also left unresolved. Perhaps further volumes of the planned trilogy will tackle all this, but it's a lot to leave up in the air.
The island setting and characters are done in classic Hilderbrand style, but the balance of backstory to resolution seems off.