TBR Challenge: Kelly Harms - The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay

A young painter, Lily has reached a crossroads in her life. Her career hasn't taken off, her best friend may no longer be the trusted friend she thought, her boyfriend is a disappointment, and now she can't keep up with the rising cost of living in the city. With no one to turn to, Lily is forced to move from her beloved apartment, but while packing she comes across a piece of mail that had slipped to the back of her junk drawer: a letter detailing further action needed to finalize the annulment of a quickie Vegas wedding. Ten years ago!
Lily decides it's time to turn over a new leaf and the first item on her list of things to fix is getting the annulment... but you can't just send a reply ten years later, "Hey by the way we are still married." This is something that must be addressed in person. Lily takes to the road to track down her husband - the charming, fun, and sexy man she connected with all those years ago - Ben Hutchinson.
Ben Hutchinson left a wealthy dot-com lifestyle behind to return home to his family and the small town he loves, Minnow Bay. He's been living off the grid and the last thing he expects is a wife he didn't know he had to show up on his doorstep.
By chance, Lily arrives at the magical Minnow Bay Inn, and there she will discover not just a place to lay her head, but new friends, a thriving art community, and maybe even the love of her life.

Comment: The old cliché is true: time does fly. It's already November and it just does not seem possible that the end of the year is so close again. 

Anyway, for this month, the challenge theme is "change of plans" and I had a lot of choices but ended up intrigued by the possibilities of this one and since I had already read a book by the author which I liked, my pick was more or less easy.

Lily is a dedicated painter who works as a barista to pay the bills. Her life in Chicago has bee everything she always wanted, although her best friend seems to be getting further apart and now she can't even pay the rent on time. While trying to find a solution she comes across several papers, including a forgotten divorce agreement she failed to send back, meaning she is still married to a Ben Hutchinson she met in Las Vegas. In an attempt to solve something in her life, she discovers Ben's location and travels to Wisconsin to deal with this situation in person, but the longer she stays in Minnow Bay, the more her plans change...

Back in April, I had read another book by this author and liked it enough to want to try something else by the author one day, although I wasn't planning on it happening so soon, but this story seemed to be a good fit for the November's topic. Lily is at a crossroads in her life, and a change of plans is the motivation she needs to improve herself and her life. I think the story was engaging and I wanted to know what would happen next, especially how would Lily learn about what wasn't going so well around her.

Lily is a painter and she has a sort of boyfriend who owns a gallery so, to her, things are great. But money wise life is tricky and Lily sometimes seems to be a little too distracted and naive, including on how she can cannot see her friendships aren't as solid as she imagined. At first, Lily seemed to be a bit too much of a scatterbrain to me and I wasn't too invested in her, but as the layers are being peeled, we can see she is actually quite alone, others don't take her into much consideration and she was being taken advantage of by those around her.

Her decision to look for Ben and deal with the marriage papers is the big change she needs to change everything else, but part of me was like, can you really forget you are married... still, in novels and movies, noting is impossible so I just went with it, and started picturing the romance, the usual situations in these types of stories. Surely, Lily would realize Ben was actually perfect for her, life in Wisconsin could offer her things Chicago couldn't and the new friendships would prove to be stronger than what she was leaving behind.

In a way, I think this is the traditional expectation of any romance or woman's fiction plot out there, and this book was marketed as such, but I should have guessed the author would give it her twist, as seen in my experience with her other book. Therefore, all the things I imagined kind of happen, but not as sweetly or as romantically as I wanted. This is to say, the story progresses in a predictable way, including other little things I didn't mention, but it's not in a syrupy or cutesy way. There are things that suggest a more dramatic vibe and I think that while this is an intriguing choice, it wasn't always one I enjoyed... Lily does change her life for the better but not without some "price" to pay.

I would say my favorite part of the story was how Lily got to learn things about herself and realize her new life could include all the things she liked,  especially about who she is as an artist. This is extremely cliché  of course, but it felt like the best executed part of the story. As things reach the end, I was glad for her, but some details ruined things a little, and without much need. I can only suppose this is the author's trademark, a HEA can exist only if including some kind of "but".

The epilogue helped me, however, to think of this story in a brighter way, and that compensated for the less positive vibes I had here and there as the story developed. Lily is a likable heroine, but only from a certain point on, in my opinion. Still, I liked her journey and end.

Grade: 7/10