Almost Home-Mariah Stewart

Almost Home
Mariah Stewart
Ballantine, Mar 22 2011, $7.99
ISBN: 9780345520371

In St. Dennis, Steffie Wyler has been in love with Wade McGregor since they were small children. In fact her life goals were to make ice cream and marry Wade. However, once he left town for college and never came back she settled on one out of two. Thus she owns One Scoop or Two ice cream parlor.

Co-owner of KenneMac microbrewery in Texas, Wade comes home to attend the wedding of Beck and Mia. Steffie and Wade spend a romantic interlude (a lot of coupling happened at that wedding), which revises her dreams, but he abruptly leaves for Texas. Nine months later, Wade’s best friend Robin is dead and with him is a toddler as he returns to St. Dennis; the company closed. Steffie assumes he is passing through, but though he wants the best for little Austin, he also delays his trip to his new job in Connecticut as he decides to pursue Steffie to see if the sparks he always felt are the real thing.

The third Chesapeake Diaries home sweet home tale (see Coming Home and Home Again) is an engaging warm contemporary romance with several family related twists. The characters drive the story line as Steffie reacts to Wade’s return with a son as strike three while he tries to make amends. Sub-genre fans will enjoy the latest visit to Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay.

Harriet Klausner