Once again we meet the four women that we became acquainted with in Happiness Key. Tracy has continued working at the Rec department. Janya's husband continues to work long hours and she still isn't pregnant. Hints from her mother about getting a grandchild are not helping. Alice and her granddaughter Olivia are doing well. The Dancing Shrimp has been taken over by new owners and Wanda finds that she is losing her job. She decides to open Wanda's Wonderful Pies despite a slump in the economy. At the Dancing Shrimp, Wanda meets Dana. She talks to Tracy about renting Dana the cottage that Herb used to live in. After the women meet Dana they agree that they would all like her to live there and since Dana has a daughter, Olivia's age, she is thrilled that that are moving in as well. Life can be complicated and that is just what happens on Happiness Key. Questions are raised about just who can you trust as other people arrive on the scene. The book was vey enjoyable. I am looking forward to reading the third book in this series. FORTUNATE HARBOR by Emilie Richards is the second book in the Happiness Key Trilogy and is filled with the interwoven lives, loves, losses, and friendships of five women who are the main characters in this series. The story is set on a twenty-five acre spit of land called Happiness Key on the Gulf Coast of Florida and so well researched and described by Richards that you will feel at home at once.Emilie Richards centers FORTUNATE HARBOR around Tracy Deloche as she did in the first book, HAPPINESS KEY. Tracy owns the cottages that her friends live in. They are Wanda Gray, Alice Brooks and her granddaughter Olivia, and JanyaKapur. These residents welcome newcomer, Dana Turner, a single mother and her daughter Lizzie, and they help to calm her fears as they take her under their collective wings.Tracy’s has to deal with C. J., her husband who was recently released from prison. Theirs is a relationship with all the ups and downs of a roller coaster. C. J. can be charming, while also making everyone anxious as they wonder what he is really up to. He says everything he does is to help make up to Tracy for his past mistakes but is that true? Before C. J. returned, Tracy had been dating Marsh Egan and just as Tracy was planning their first quiet time together, C. J. had popped back into her life and of course, wanted her back, thus scrapping her plans for Marsh.Dana, and daughter Lizzie, seem to have their own mysterious past that they were running from prior to settling in the one vacant cottage on Happiness Key. Things now seem perfect for the pair until something from Dana’s past comes back that may cost her all that she treasures.Janya Kapur very much wants to have a child, however, her husband, Rishi does not and so things are tense between them. After all poor Janya went through in HAPPINESS KEY with this relationship, will this be the last straw for her?Meanwhile, there is the madcap Wanda who brings humor and good spirits to even the toughest of problems. She has worked at the Dancing Shrimp for a long time but now the owners are going to be turning the Dancing Shrimp into a fancy bar and letting go of some of their help. Unfortunately, one of those fired is Wanda. She is distraught until Alice gets involved. With Alice’s help, Wanda realizes she can try opening her own business. Her pies are delicious and famous already and so she opens Wanda’s Wonderful Pies.Emilie Richards, Author of such books as A LIE FOR A LIE, SISTER'S CHOICE, and HAPPINESS KEY, gives readers stories rich with diverse characters as well as settings that often are as important as any character. And so it is no different when Emilie repeats this successful pattern in this latest novel, FORTUNATE HARBOR. One of the first authors who personally answered my plea for a review copy and interview was Emilie Richards. She has never let me down in any of her books and once again, Ms. Richards does not disappoint. With this second book of the Happiness Key Trilogy, Emilie’s smooth writing style makes for a quick read as she once again has woven together the lives of her characters to give readers a rich story filled with intrigues, emotional confusion, financial despair, and even a possibility of new love. Thank you once again, Emilie!
What do You think about Fortunate Harbor (2010)?
2nd part of trilogy. Still think this should be a movie! Would love to visit Happiness Key!
—killerpavlov
This is my favorite book in the series :)
—heather
