Review: Heartwaves by Anita Kelly

Heartwaves (A Greyfin Bay #1)
by Anita Kelly

My Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f or nb/nb
Mae uses She/ They pronouns and Dell uses He/ They pronouns. They don’t really specify if they identify as non-binary or not.

Blurb:
Mae Kellerman is content. After forty years of ups and downs, she has a meaningful job at a queer community center in Portland, Oregon. She has an apartment full of plants, a ride-or-die group of friends.

Until the day her best friend actually does up and die. Leaving Mae with a hole in her heart—and a shocking amount of money.

But before she can think about that, she has to throw his perfect death party, followed by spreading his ashes on the Oregon Coast. It’s there that she stumbles upon an empty storefront for sale in the tiny whale-watching town of Greyfin Bay. Overnight, an old dream resurfaces…and Mae’s newfound inheritance could make it possible.

If only Dell McCleary didn’t stand in her way.

Dell only sells property to the folks actually invested in the best interests of Greyfin Bay. Not some Portlander with pink hair who breezes in on a whim. A Portlander who, irritatingly, refuses to take no for an answer.

As Mae upends her life for the pursuit of opening a queer-owned bookstore in a conservative coastal town, she and Dell are forced to work together, navigating prejudices and past traumas along the way. But as opening day of Bay Books grows nearer, Mae’s heart grows increasingly tangled with her landlord’s—even if his own heart might already belong to someone else.

Heartwaves is a contemporary queer romance that explores the risks and rewards of life in any landscape, and the freedom to lift the limitations we put on love.

My Review

I really like the Anita Kelly books I’ve read so far, so when I heard of this book in a new series I was really excited. Heartwaves is my favorite book by the author so far, I just loved this story so much and had a wonderful time reading it. The characters and places all feel so real and I loved that. It feels like Greyfin Bay actually exists and these people are there living their lives, that’s how well it’s all written.

Heartwaves is told in dual point of views of both Mae and Dell. I liked getting to know both of them. Mae’s best friend has just died and left her with a sizeable inheritance. When she’s spreading his ashes in Greyfin Bay she sees this storefront and the idea of opening a bookstore there takes place. Dell owns the place and isn’t planning to sell the property to Mae. They start out as adversaries, but slowly become friends and then grow even closer.

I really liked reading about these character, they both feel so real. They had their struggles, their dreams, their hardships, pasts and futures. They both felt so realistic and relatable. And the writing style of this author just really works for me. I wanted to keep reading about these characters, see how their lives played out. I wanted to see if Mae could make her bookstore dream come true and whether Dell would fall in love with Mae.

This is a very slow burn romance and I loved it. They slowly grow closer and I loved those little moments were I felt their connection deepen. I really liked reading about the two of them. I really liked them together. I liked reading about Mae’s journey to open the bookstore, I had expected it be more about the bookstore after opening, but most of the book covers the journey toward opening. And I actually really liked that too, seeing how Mae’s dream slowly became reality.

There was a part toward the end that I didn’t like as much, although I did appreciate how the author avoided the typical type of conflict for romance books. I still felt that part just wasn’t as engaging and I struggled through it a bit, but then the last chapter luckily was awesome again and wrapped up the story so well.

To summarize: I really loved this story, the characters feel so real, alive and relatable. They both have their struggles and their dreams, they have a past and dreams for the future. And I just really liked reading about them. I liked reading about Mae’s journey to open her bookstore. There are some great side characters as well. The part toward my end I didn’t like as much as it wasn’t as engaging, but the ending was wonderful and I loved how it wrapped things up. I look forward to more stories in the series.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Bookbub.