Whenever I come across a free e-book, I always review it as my “thank you” to the author. Today, I’m reviewing One Kind Sail, part of the One Kind Deed series by Christine DePetrillo, a contemporary romance.
Title: One Kind Sail
Series: One Kind Deed
Author: Christine DePetrillo
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: 293 pages, 82,000 words
Release Date: August 9, 2024
Her body shudders in my hold and I have this crazy urge to hold Faith tighter. So I do.
Blurb: The only thing Colin Hayes wants to do is dive with his Navy team. After a rescue mission leaves him with a leg that’s no good for swimming anymore, that dream is dead. He may as well be dead too. Living in a small town in California across the street from his sister and being stuck running a marina fail to provide the excitement or the purpose his former life did. His future promises to be an endless stream of long, boring days. How will he survive?
Faith Brenton lost her best friend and teaching colleague to an accident. The joy she felt being an educator is buried under grief and extinguished by her administrator at Maplehaven High School in Vermont who doesn’t approve of her alternative teaching methods. Wanting to shake things up a bit, Faith enters a magazine contest and wins. The prize? A year-long adventure by sailboat. Perhaps she can reset her life with fair winds and full sails.
The author offered this up as a freebie on social media. I liked the premise, so I clicked on the link. I must say I do not regret downloading this book. It’s part of the One Kind Deed series. If I receive a freebie, I always do a review as my “thank you” to the author.
Faith is in deep grief, having lost her best friend, a woman she respected and admired. To honour her dear friend’s memory, a woman who lived life to the fullest and gave more than she received, Faith sets off on a sailing expedition, having won a contest that her dear departed friend would have entered.
Colin is also in deep grief. He’s grieving the loss of what he loved most—working as a rescue diver for the Navy. He dreams all the time about attempting to rescue a woman, but finding her already dead, and his own accident during the recovery mission that cost him his diving career.
I must say, I enjoyed the author’s look into grief, whether through death or the loss of life as we know it. Some people, like Faith, do their best to honour the memory of a loved one by attempting to push on, while others, like Colin, bury themselves deep in anger and self-pity (and I don’t negatively mean this word), unsure how to live when all that they’d known is lost.
The way they meet is so appropriate. I liked Faith’s thoughts when her boat was sinking. She won’t give up. She’ll push on, even though it’d be so easy to let the ocean claim her so she can be with her friend. And I loved Colin’s reaction to the sinking vessel. For that brief moment, he forgets his anger and bitterness. He morphs back into the Colin of yesterday, determined to save whoever is in the vessel.
Talk about the meetings of all meetings. But Colin isn’t ready to play the hero. He just wants to slink back into his turtle shell and lick his wounds. As for Faith, she’s no quitter and is determined to help the man who rescued her.
They are truly grumpy/sunshine. A mismatched pairing who needs each other to heal. The way the author set up the plot is brilliant. We have great secondary characters adding to the story and pushing along the main characters. We have sizzling chemistry between the two main leads. We’re given a deep look into their thoughts and beliefs. And they also have a whirlwind romance while Faith is staying in Colin’s boat while waiting to hear back from the contest organizers.
There is even a subplot the author added to really push home their healing after facing such horrible loss. You can see why the series is called One Kind Deed, but I won’t give away how that fits into this novel, or I’ll spoil it for others.
The author is a wonderful writer, focusing on the feelings between the characters and giving them strong arcs of change for the better. Do yourself a favour and get a copy.
Maggie Blackbird 