Review: Barefoot Season by Susan Mallery

4 STARS Barefoot Season is the first Blackberry Island novel. It is a complex storyline with a little romance in it. A couple of love scenes. I like the questions about the book in the back. Michelle has been away from her home on Blackberry Island at the hotel thats been in her family for a couple of years. She has been in the army and deployed over thier 3 times and come back wounded. Her mother has died three months ago and really blamed her for everything. She finds her former bestfriend Carly running the inn and living in her apartment with her daughter at the inn. Michelle and Carly were close until thier senior year when Michelle's father left her mother to runaway with Carly's mother. Carly and Michelle's mother both blamed her for thier running away. Both Michelle and Carly loved the same guy who two days before the wedding slep with Michelle and Carly walked in on them. Carly pregant still married him and Michelle ran away and enlisted. Michelle is suffering physcally and emotionly from the war. She also finds that the hotel has grown and now as two morgages on it. The day she got back she fired Carly when she found her living in her former room. Carly is scared for the future. She found out that Michelle's mother had lied to her for years telling her that she will be earning up to half of the hotel. It was never hers to promise that. She had been working for peanuts because of that promise of a better future for her and her daughter. Her husband Alan had left before the baby came and took all her money with her. she would lose her job and her daughters only home. So she did not leave as Michelle told her too. The bank officer is making Michelle keep Carly on for two years to run the hotel and if Michelle can't bring the morgages current will have to forfit the hotel. Thier has already been an offer for the hotel. The characters were complex at least Michelle and Carly are. They have real problems to work through. The romance of the book seems rushed and could have had a bigger part of the story than it did. I was surprised at some of the developments in the story. Like Gabby and Chance a lot. Wonder if I missed exactly why Michelle really hates daisies. I was given this ebook to read in exchange of honest review from Netgalley. 03/17/2012 PUB Harlequin Mira