Review: Love on the Lake

I’ve lost count the number of Helena Hunting books I’ve read over the last couple years (after I finally started reading her books). She has so many! I’m always here for supporting Canadian romance authors so I started Hunting’s Lakeside series last year. My full review of book one, Love Next Door, is here), but the short version is: I enjoyed it but didn’t love it. I thought I should give Love on the Lake a chance just in case it hit the spot better than the first. And, well, it didn’t. Not really. It was a fine romance but left me feeling…meh. Which is never a feeling I want to have!

Here's the book’s description:

Teagan Firestone has always been the dutiful daughter, especially since her mom died. But as her father finally begins to move on, it’s her turn to do the same. Her destination: Pearl Lake, a close-knit community with an entrepreneurial spirit and secrets of its own.
One of them is Aaron Saunders, who dropped out of college to work construction for Pearl Lake’s upper class. He’s a mystery and has a playboy reputation—that is, until he meets Teagan. Neither of them is looking for love, but in a town this small, it’s hard not to let your heart get involved.
As their romance heats up, Aaron’s elusive past comes to light and Teagan is there for him, bringing them even closer together. But when Teagan is forced to face her own demons, her inability to accept the support of friends and family threatens the life she’s worked so hard to build.
Can Aaron love her, even when she can’t love herself?

I do love Pearl Lake and the setting Hunting has created for this series. I think that’s what I was originally drawn to and what convinced me to go back to the series again for book two. The small town was incredibly realistic, and I really appreciated that as I was reading the novel. People cared about their neighbours which sometimes bordered on nosiness. There’s both good and bad that comes with living in a small town like Pearl Lake and Hunting does a great job of showing off both, while managing to focus on the good more than the bad!

The rest of the story though? I’ll repeat what I said before: meh. Aaron and Teagan were fine. They were supposed to be multi-layered, complex individuals and I suppose they were but for some reason their complexity just seemed really forced. Aaron had a family secret that he was hiding from everyone which, fine, secrets are allowed but keeping it a secret and the trauma that came from it was just…I don’t know. It didn’t make sense. (Trauma can make people do things that don’t make “sense” to others, I get that, but I wasn’t feeling that in this case.) Then there was Teagan who was on all sorts of medication and did not AT ALL have healthy coping methods, so she started to spiral. I appreciate that mental health and all that goes with it is being explored more and more in contemporary novels, especially romances, but, again, something just didn’t work for me. Is it because I can’t fully understand what Teagan was going through? I don’t know…maybe? Or was it just that the writing was lacking something? It’s hard to say and has been bothering me since I read the book back in April.

I couldn’t remember how much I was supposed to have known about Aaron from the first book. I feel like perhaps I should have had a better idea of him and his backstory, but it definitely didn’t stick – if it was ever there to begin with. Because of that, I could not for the life of me understand the animosity he seemed to feel for Teagan. But even though they didn’t like each other, they were still hot for each other? I have a really hard time with enemies to lovers stories and it was unfortunate that this one included some of the elements from that trope. It didn’t help my initial enjoyment of the story.

All in all, Love on the Lake was not a winner for me. I didn’t love the characters, even though there was nothing really wrong with them. Something about them and the plot of this book just didn’t click and I, personally, need that when it comes to reading romances. I’m not sure if Helena Hunting is writing another in this series but I likely won’t be checking it out.

*A copy of this novel was provided by the Canadian distributor, Thomas Allen & Son, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*