Safe Harbor

Safe Harbor
Luanne Rice
Bantam/Encore
ISBN: 0743537661
Fiction, Romance, Audio Book
Reviewed by Kelley Hartsell

Dana Underhill has just returned to Connecticut from years abroad in Paris. She is reeling from her recent divorce and now has to deal with the grief of losing her sister as well. She returns, planning to just take her two nieces back to Paris, but things have a way or turning out different than expected. Allie, the younger of the two children is taking everything in stride and working through her grief pretty well. The older of the two, Quinn is stubborn and resentful over everything, and is convinced there is more to the death of her parents then has been revealed.
Sam Trevor is an old friend of Dana who also has recently returned to town. He’s always had feelings for her, even as a young boy when Dana was his sailing instructor. As he renews his friendship and makes plans with Quinn to recover her parents’ sailboat, his bond to Dana grows stronger, resulting in a new love.
With Safe Harbor, once again Luanne Rice proves her talent for writing heart wrenching stories full of strong emotion and tender love. The author is skilled at representing all kinds of relationships in her stories and this one is no different. Readers will especially be drawn into Quinn’s story, feeling her pain, her anger, her frustration at losing her parents. She is the rebellious preteen, but by the end of the story her behavior will be completely understood.
There were a couple flaws in the story though. The ending to the book was a bit too perfect, too predictable for readers to fully enjoy it. Also, the relationship between Dana and Sam, though well developed was a little too unbelievable. As much as one can understand and enjoy relationships between a woman and a younger man, there seemed to be too much of an age difference for this reader to totally buy it. Granted the abridged version of the novel was listened too, no actual numbers were given to show what the age gap was, but there was definitely the feeling that there was a significant difference in ages, too much possibly for some to find it believable.