Where the Heart Meets the Sea by Kimbra Drake

Thank you @Kimberly_Engebrigtsen @LoveBooksTours @LBT.Crew For letting me be part of this tour and reviewing this book. Where the Heart Meets the Sea is a romance/literary fiction. I received a paperback of Where the Heart Meets the Sea, and the writing is the right size for me because I do often struggle with the font and the size being tiny, and this is perfect and doesn’t make my eyes squint, which is a bonus. I like the front cover; it’s stunning and makes me want to go and visit this place, which is set in Norway. Furthermore, I like when you open the paperback and there’s a map, and it gives you a bit of detail of what the places are called so you can flip back to the map when you're reading in the book, which is excellent. Not only that, but I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions in the book. They were beautiful, and I could really visualize them in my mind. I found the story easy to get into from chapter 1 to the end. I like in this book the topics it hits on: romance, friendship, and mystery, and I also enjoyed seeing the characters develop throughout the book. Likewise, I found Where the Heart Meets the Sea an intriguing and heartwarming read, and it made me want to go and visit Norway/Norwegian people. A moving and heartfelt read, which is beautifully written—four stars. Blurb An emotionally rich love story with themes of lost and found family in a stunning Norwegian island setting. Twenty-nine-year-old Ella Nilsen has never known her parents—or even how her mother died. Raised by her emotionally distant Norwegian grandmother, Hilda, Ella has long accepted that the topic of her parents is off-limits. When Hilda passes away, Ella is shocked to find that her inheritance includes a summer cottage perched above the sea in a place called Lyngør, a remote island in Norway. To sell it, she’ll have to visit the cottage and take stock of what’s there—and maybe Lyngør holds the key to her mother’s mysterious passing, if she can get the locals to talk. For as long as he can remember, Leif Arnesen, a thirty-four-year-old boatbuilder in Lyngør, has carried grief and shame from his father’s death, an accident that upended their small community. When Ella breezes into Lyngør looking for answers, her very presence stirs up old ghosts and earns her the villagers’ suspicions. As sparks begin to fly between Leif and Ella and their relationship blossoms quickly, everything Leif knows to be true threatens to capsize. Perfect for fans of Jennifer Probst’s Our Italian Summer and set amid the rough and wild beauty of the Norwegian archipelagoes, Kimbra Drake’s Where the Heart Meets the Sea asks what happens when we’re forced to rewrite the stories that have defined our lives—and what we do with the next chapters. Author bio Kimbra Drake is a pseudonym for a published fiction writer who is also a certified book coach and developmental editor. She lives and writes in Virginia and Ireland. When not crafting stories, some of her passions include traveling, hiking in nature, photography, and watching gigs and readings at indie bookstores. Where the Heart Meets the Sea is inspired by her time living in Lyngør, Norway.