The First Warm Evening Of The Year by Jamie M Saul

Occasionally a book comes along that you wish with all your heart you could leap within it’s pages and walk along it’s streets and hang out with the new friends who hold court within.  The First Warm Evening Of The Year is such a book.

~Sheila

Geoffrey Tremont has a pretty sweet life.  He works hard and lives fairly well in his New York home and seeing the occasional woman he has his eye on but with no deep commitment and that is the way he likes it. 

Then one day a blast from the past lands at his doorstep.  A College friend, Laura, who he has not seen in twenty years has passed away from cancer and has named him executor of her estate.  Bewildered, and grieved for the friendship he once had, Geoffrey packs his bags to go to Laura’s home in Shady Grove planning to get things in order and then head back home.  Then Geoffrey meets Marion, a friend of Laura’s who is reserved and mourning the loss of her husband.  Oddly, Geoffrey is drawn to this quiet woman and finds himself wondering if there could be any future with her.

It’s kind of funny as I am normally inclined to prefer books that move along at a nice clip, keeping me engaged and turning pages.  The First Warm Evening Of The Year does not fall into that category.  Slowly you are taken through a calmly paced adventure of nor peaks and valleys but more level terrain and for whatever reason, it worked for me.

Geoffrey is the guy in the fast lane at the beginning of the book who finds that Shady Grove has more appeal than he would have ever thought.  I think I may have liked him for that reason.  As a person who tends to love in the fast lane, I occasionally dream of living in the woods growing my own food and avoiding all outside world communications.  It’s true… sometimes the lure to slow down and shut out the outside noise is great…

I digress.

For whatever reason, this book spoke to me, Geoffrey is a protagonist I enjoyed watching change, told mainly from his perspective it was interesting to see things through this 40 something bachelors eyes. 

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for allowing me a trip to Shady Grove where I too could slow down and bask in someone elses world for awhile.