Sandcastle Beach by Jenny Holiday (Review)

Title: Sandcastle Beach
Author: Jenny Holiday
Type: Fiction
Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Forever (Hachette Book Group)
Date published: March 9, 2021

A complimentary physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Maya Mehta will do anything to save her tiny, beloved community theater. Put on musicals she hates? Check. Hire an arrogant former-pop-star-turned-actor? Done. But what Maya really needs to save her theater is Matchmaker Bay’s new business grant. She’s got some serious competition, though: Benjamin “Law” Lawson, local bar owner, Jerk Extraordinaire, and Maya’s annoyingly hot arch nemesis. Let the games begin.

Law loves nothing more than getting under Maya’s skin, and making those gorgeous eyes dance with irritation. But when he discovers the ex-pop star has a thing for Maya, too, Law decides he’s done waiting in the wings-starting with a scorching-hot kiss. Turns out there’s a thin line between hate and irresistible desire, and Maya and Law are really good at crossing it. But when things heat up, will they allow their long-standing feud to get in the way of their growing feelings?

⤖ My Review ⬻

All I had to read in a newsletter from Forever Romance were the words “romance” and “Lake Huron” and I was sold on Sandcastle Beach by Jenny Holiday! I live in Ontario, Canada and Lake Huron is one of my favourite holiday destinations within the province, so I knew that I absolutely had to read this romance book.

To express the need I felt to read this book even further, I would like to emphasize that this book is the third book in a series and I almost never read books out of order (especially if there are likely to be spoilers about the previous books, which was definitely the case here). Despite said spoilers, Holiday has left such an impression on me, and left me feeling as if I had been to this little town in Matchmaker Bay in real life. I felt as if I’d met the characters while on vacation. It’s hard to explain.

Those of you living outside of Canada have likely heard many a time about how long Canadian winters last. Well, winter has felt even longer due to COVID, therefore I’m so grateful for the bit of sunshine that Sandcastle Beach brought into my life.

I will say that I likely don’t recommend reading the Matchmaker Bay books out of order, because I did find that for the first half of the book I was left out of inside joke that every character seemed to be privy to. There were references to things (that while not completely necessary to keeping up with the plot) I would definitely have liked to have know the context for, etc. The pacing of the story also threw me off a little bit, which might not have been the case if I had gotten used to Holiday’s writing in the previous books. In the end, I also did find that because of the pacing, I felt like I spent more time with Maya and Law than I actually did.

I definitely recommend Sandcastle Bay while also recommending that you read the books if you want the most an experience of Matchmaker Bay and its characters to be as immersive and thorough as possible!

⤖ About the Author ⬻

Jenny Holiday started writing in fourth grade, when her awesome hippie teacher, between sessions of Pete Seeger singing and anti-nuclear power plant letter writing, gave the kids notebooks and told them to write stories. Most of Jenny’s featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or serial killers who managed to murder everyone except her and her mom. She showed

early promise as a romance writer, though, because nearly every story had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up to find that the story had been a dream, and that her best friend, father, and sister had not, in fact, been axe-murdered. From then on, she was always writing, often in her diary, where she liked to decorate her declarations of existential angst with nail polish teardrops. Eventually she channelled her penchant for scribbling into a more useful format. After picking up a PhD in urban geography, she became a professional writer, spending many years promoting research at a major university, which allowed her to become an armchair astronomer/historian/particle physicist, depending on the day. Eventually, she decided to try her hand again at happy endings—minus the bloodbaths. You can follow her on twitter at @jennyholi or visit her on the web at jennyholiday.com.

⤖ Places to Purchase the Book ⬻

⤖ Let's Chat ⬻

Thank you for reading my review! Have you read this book? What did you think? And if you haven’t read it yet, do you plan to? Let me know in the comments!