Review: Loving at 40 by L.B. Dunbar (Lakeside Cottage #3)

Note: An advance reader copy (ARC) was provided by the author.

I'm seriously going to need to catch up on everything I've been missing as far as the Lakeside Cottage series is concerned because after having just finished Loving at 40, which is the third book in the aforementioned series, I obviously need to keep better tabs on what some of my favorite authors are up to! L.B. Dunbar is my go-to author when it comes to romances with main characters who are in their forties. Now, I don't make it a habit of diving into the middle of an on-going series. I prefer to read a series from the beginning, but I read the blurb for this book, and I knew that this was going to be one of those extremely rare occasions where I was going to break my rule, and I'm so glad I did.

At forty-five, Archer McCaryn is proud of everything he's achieved when it comes to his work, but he's begun to feel tired and weary. He hopes to find solace in the family-owned Lakeside Cottage; instead, he finds a raven-haired widow with two daughters in the apartment above the garage that he considers his. Jenna Davis is a forty-two-year-old high school teacher who needed a vacation as much as she wanted to be there for her best friend--one of Archer's sisters--who was still mourning the death of her husband. Archer knows becoming involved with her would be ill-advised, but this tempting woman and her girls, Talia and Rosie, are calling to a side of him that he thought ceased to exist.

This book totally gave me the FEELS! I loved everything about it. There's a whole lot of romance and tension alongside a healthy dose of wit and angst plus a dash of suspense. The great thing about it is that everything melded so darn well, never feeling as if these elements were dumped together and the author hoped for the best. But then, this is L.B. Dunbar we're talking about, and she's proven time and again that she knows how to deliver a story worth reading and characters worth cheering for. I loved seeing Archer and Jenna lower their defenses and embrace the possibility of them. I appreciated that Dunbar didn't make Jenna's late husband into a villain. The bits I got of the other couples definitely has me wanting to read the first two books before the fourth and final Lakeside Cottage novel is out in September, which I'm also excited for. Five stars go to Loving at 40.

Date Read: 03 June 2022

Learn more about L.B. Dunbar.

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