Firefly Island by Lisa Wingate

SOMETIMES LOVE TAKES YOU ON AN ADVENTURE COMPLETELY OFF THE MAP

 

If you like a bit of mystery mixed with your romance, you just might love Firefly Island by Lisa Wingate. This is the third book in her Shores of Moses Lake series, but no worries if you haven’t read the other two yet, they each seem to stand alone quite well.

Mallory Hale’s life quickly veers off course when she falls
hopelessly in love. After a whirlwind romance, Mallory finds herself
leaving the bustle and action of Capitol Hill for the remote town of
Moses Lake, Texas–with husband, stepson, and a U-Haul in tow.

A sweet, mishap-filled journey into marriage, motherhood, and ranch
living ensues, and Mallory is filled with both the wonderment of love
and the insecurities of change. But what she can’t shake is the unease
she feels around her husband’s new boss, Jack West. Jack’s presence–and
his mysterious past–set her on edge, and when hints of a scandal
emerge, Mallory finds herself seeking answers . . . and comes to realize
that the middle-of-nowhere home she wasn’t sure she wanted is the very
place she’ll risk everything to save. 

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I’ll be honest, and although I’ve read the other two books in this series and have been anxiously awaiting this one, it was the cover that I was first drawn to. With a glimpse of what we are to assume is Moses Lake, I think it’s absolutely beautiful, and quite romantic.
Surprisingly, Firefly Island does not begin at Moses Lake at all, but jumps right into a news interview with our main character Mallory Hale in Washington DC. Immediately, you know that a major news story has been uncovered, and you as the reader is about to backtrack to find out what that is. 


You are taken back around a year earlier, when Mallory is working on Capitol Hill, and meets Daniel Everson. They embark on a whirlwind romance that she never saw coming, and quickly finds herself in married, a step-mom, and packed up leaving Washington DC to the middle of nowhere Texas. When she arrives, she is right away quite disenchanted by her new husbands very strange boss, Jack West, and a possible unsolved murder mystery surrounding the very property she is now living on.


In Firefly Island, we watch Mallory grow into her roll as a mother and wife, but not without some bumps along the road, which actually seemed a very realistic scenario. 
I will say, that parts of this book were a bit slow or even hard to follow. It seemed to rabbit trail a bit with it’s plot line, and even the “big ending” left me a bit unsatisfied. You’re waiting for Mallory to solve a major plot line mystery, and end the end what she ends up uncovering is nothing like I expected. 


Most the characters were well developed, although I wish that the author would have connected the reader more with Daniel his thoughts about being in Texas and his new job. We see Mallory grow in her faith and character, and by the end of the book, she is almost a completely different person than she started out.