Christa has been hiding out for years on a remote island studying sea snails - escaping a trauma from 10 years earlier, as well as the notoriety of her father's disappearance and supposed death 25 years earlier. Now, her father has reappeared. As the true story of his disappearance comes out, Christa rekindles an old friendship with a childhood friend, Nate.
This is a romance, but also a story of healing, and coming to terms with trauma - reclaiming your own story.
I thought it was OK. I did enjoy the relationship between Christa and Nate. ( )

This story was a wonderful combination of humorous and heart-warming. Christa Liddle has hidden herself away on an island in the Indian Ocean studying ocean snails. She grew up in the spotlight as the daughter of a TV presenter/naturalist who disappeared in Alaska when Christa was a toddler.

Christa's mother kept the legend alive and furthered her husband's work by setting up a foundation to support conservation efforts which is what led to Christa's fame since she was brought along to publicity events and TV shows mainly to be cute and hold cute animals. In her teens she went a little wild drinking and using drugs until a traumatic event at one of her mother's benefits. Sent off to boarding school. Christa feel in love with zoology.

But now her life in isolation comes to an abrupt end. The father who disappeared twenty-five years earlier has reappeared from the depths of Alaska. Christa, her two older sisters, and her mother have to deal with all the changes this makes in her life. For Christa, it brings out her fears that her youthful excesses will be brought up again.

It also means a reunion with Nate who was a childhood friend of her older sisters and the object of Christa's crush. He was the one who saved her from more harm at the benefit. She doesn't know quite what to make of him now that she is seeing him through adult eyes. But they seem to be falling in love.

This was an excellent story. I laughed out loud more than one time as I was reading and I felt deeply for the confusion Christa feels about the reappearance of her missing father. ( )

I genuinely do not know how to rate this book. I neither loved it nor hated it, but I think I disliked it just a tiny tad more than I liked it! I think I disliked the fact that a certain character (and thankfully was not a main character) had not-so-nice things to say about people of a certain age, which I am one of!

Authors, please don't insult what could possibly be a large part of your audience. Those of us of a certain age like to read books like this too, you know!

I expected something that I did not get; I got more romance than I expected, less comedy than I expected, and more characters that I disliked. I didn't even feel all that much for the Liddle family.

However, the story was, for the most part, an interesting and clever one and had an intriguing little twist at the end.

*Arc was supplied by the publisher Penguin Group/Berkley Books, the author, and NetGalley. ( )