Showing posts with label Key West. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Key West. Show all posts

Sunday, March 1, 2026

The Love Haters

The Love Haters by Katherine Center (2025) 302 pages

Katie Vaughn is a videographer whose boss is in the process of a dramatic downsizing. Her co-worker Cole has given her a choice assignment: to go to Key West to make a video for the Coast Guard, featuring one of its higher profile rescue swimmers—a guy who had saved Jennifer Aniston's dog—and had gotten well known on the internet as a result. While Katie is happy with the chance to shine and perhaps escape getting fired, she doesn't know at first that the job was to feature Cole's brother Hutch. Cole blames Hutch for some problems in his life, and doesn't want the assignment for himself.

Katie shows up on Key West, and meets Cole and Hutch's Aunt Rue, who owns a group of vacation cottages. One requirement by the Coast Guard requires that she know how to swim, in case the helicopter transporting the rescue team (and her) goes down. Katie doesn't want to admit she doesn't know how to swim. Rue takes charge of getting her swimming lessons and asks Hutch to help, even though Hutch is the last person that Katie wants to know about her deficiency.

Some of the plot is a bit unexpected and unrealistic, but the characters are generally well portrayed, especially Rue and her friends, and Katie's outspoken cousin Beanie. My favorite character was Hutch's dog, a Great Dane named George Bailey. The book was fine, but it's not my favorite by Center, whose work I usually enjoy more.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Turtle in Paradise

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm  191 pp.

Eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to Key West to live with her aunt after her mom is hired as housekeeper to a woman who hates children. It is Turtle's first experience living in a real family. After an initial bumpy start she comes to enjoy her time there with her three boy cousins and their friends in a place where everyone knows who you are. In the process she has a couple big adventures, becomes friends with a mysterious old woman who turns out to be her grandmother, and searches for lost pirate treasure. Some of the story was predictable but it is a children's book. I really enjoyed this book and the added fact that Turtle dislikes Shirley Temple movies (as do I) and tells Ernest Hemingway (not my favorite, either) what is wrong with the way writer's write just added to my enjoyment.