While it is no surprise to you, dear reader that I love romance novels, my taste usually runs to the paranormal. I was stuck under the hairdryer….again and picked up this book. I was glad that I did.
Virgin River tells the story of Melina Monroe, a forty-something nurse who takes an assignment in a small town, called strangely enough, Virgin River and through a series of medical adventures becomes the town’s nurse and midwife and falls in love. OK, the plot is rather predictable.
This is what I like about the book, and what has drawn me to read the next five sequels: the characters are realistic. The heroine is not some Barbie-doll ish twenty year old, but a woman in her early forties with a brain and real personality. The townspeople are quirky and likeable and I cared about them. Many of the supporting characters are featured in later books and you find Melinda and her hero in the later books as well.
I recommended this book and the sequels to a library patron. She took the first one out with some trepidation and came back a few days later and took out the rest of them, saying that she would like to live in Virgin River.
Some days so would I. I wonder if they have an opening for a librarian, and a hunky ex-marine for me.
I highly recommend these books. All of the Virgin River books are available to be checked out at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.
I love a good romance and so far Robyn Carr has written several of them in a series. “Virgin River” is the first in that series. It concerns Melinda Monroe, a recent widow and trauma nurse who answers an advertisement looking for a nurse practitioner for the town of Virgin River, Washington. She gets there to find that the house she was promised was in poor condition, the doctor she was supposed to assist was less than welcoming and that she had been hired by an older woman who thought the town needed her.
She almost leaves, and then finds a baby on her doorstep fulfilling a dream of motherhood she had during her marriage. Not only that, Jack Sheridan, the local bar owner and former Marine falls for her.
I really liked this book for a few reasons; the characters are well done and recognizable without being clichés. Both Jack and Melinda are past the first blush of youth. What I really liked was that Melinda came from a happy prior marriage. Most romances I have read where the heroine falls in love for the second time are on the run from an abusive first husband. I also liked the town is so full of quirky characters who recur in other books in the series. In fact when I read this book, I found myself wondering what happened to a particular character only to find him again in the sequel “Shelter Mountain”.
So far I have read the first four books in this series and Carr has done a great job of keeping the stories fresh with different twists on the theme and I have enjoyed seeing Melinda and Jack pop up over and over. I recommend this series.