Who doesn’t love stories with ocean-front views? Just the idea of sandy beaches, tidal pools, and salt-laden breezes is enough for me to take a second look. A Shore Thing takes place on the central California coastline and carries these elements and more.
The main character, Callie Duflay, discovers that longtime residents of Otter Bay have placed their oceanfront property for sale, and the company in the process of purchasing it has plans for a large development. Callie is outraged and immediately begins SOS (Save Our Shores) in an attempt to stop the deal from going through. But maybe she should have talked to the property owners before she goes public.
Gage Mitchell is the architect in charge of planning the development. It’s the first contract for his newly launched eco-design firm, and he’s thrilled with the possibilities for all the ‘green’ concepts he can work into the design. He sees his hard won new start about to get washed away when Callie and her band of unlikely citizens starts to interfere with the property’s sale. If only they understood that they were on the same side. Or are they?
So often novelists pit total opposites against each other, but this isn’t the case with Callie and Gage. They both have a desire to preserve the shoreline, just in different ways. Carobini worked in a couple of twists to the plot that I hadn’t expected, which heightened my enjoyment of the novel. However, one problem that cropped up a number of times was slippage between past and present tense.
I discovered this novel in September when hunting for ‘comparative analysis’ for my novel proposal, and purchased the Kindle download for iPhone. A Shore Thing compares to my novel in that both are full length inspirational romance novels that are (or could be, in my case) part of a series. Both deal with ‘green’ issues, but where my novel tackles the concept of knowing where one’s food comes from, Carobini’s deals with broader environmental impacts.
This link goes to a .pdf excerpt of the novel, in case you’re interested in reading more.
Over the years, Julie Carobini published several hundred articles and stories in magazines and books, including Aspire, Decision, Expecting, Focus on the Family, Key Magazine and God’s Abundance: 365 Days to a Simpler Life. As she wrote, she found a common theme cropping up: her family, the sea, and God’s timely work in the lives of those around her. Julie Carobini and her family make their home on the sun-spattered California coast.
