Review: Finding Home on Winslow Island

Finding Home on Winslow Island by Chrissy Elliot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Chrissy Elliot's "Finding Home on Winslow Island" was a sweet story and featured a number of likeable, quirky characters. Unfortunately, the romance between main characters Parker and Tessa didn't work very well for me. The entire story took place over the span of a long weekend, and Tessa and Parker started off pretty clearly disliking each other. I just didn't find it believable for them to go from complete antipathy to head-over-heels in love in such a short period of time, no matter how attracted they secretly were to each other. There were too many complicating factors, and neither of them was very good at communicating what they wanted to the other.

I think my biggest problem was with Parker himself, whose characterization never entirely made sense to me. For example, he supposedly grew up on Winslow Island and spent a lot of time at his father's medical practice, but acted like it was a complete surprise that the patients there liked to have a cup of tea and chat during their checkups. Shouldn't he have already known that, especially since he once planned to take over for his father after he finished medical school? I never understood why Parker would have wanted to go into family medicine anyway given his terrible bedside manner. Supposedly his personality was different before his ex-girlfriend turned down his marriage proposal and broke his heart, but I find it difficult to believe that a broken heart would cause a total loss of social skills. In addition, if Parker really planned on taking over his father's practice from the time he was young, why would he train as a surgeon in the first place? It's a lengthy process and requires a completely different skill set and board certifications than the ones required for family practice. Can doctors just switch specialties mid-career without re-taking their boards?

There were several things about Tessa's background that were unclear to me as well. For example, did she grow up on the island, and if so, how is it that she didn't know Parker and/or his brothers when they were younger? The island isn't that big, so they likely would have gone to school together. If Tessa didn't grow up on the island, how did her parents end up buying a bed and breakfast there, and why did her sister Gabby follow them to the island too?

Overall, I think "Finding Home on Winslow Island" had a lot of potential, but needed some additional editing and polishing to fully realize it. That said, it was a sweet story, and readers who are less detail-oriented (read: nitpicky) than me probably won't be bothered by a lot of the things that bothered me. I would still recommend the book for fans of clean contemporary romance.

*Review copy provided by the author via BookSirens. All opinions expressed are my own.

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