The McCarthys of Gansett Island, Book 3For four of the best summers of his young life, Luke Harris was in love with Sydney Donovan, a wealthy seasonal visitor to Gansett Island. Then Sydney went off to college and never came back. She married another man and had two children while Luke remained on the island, working at McCarthy’s Gansett Marina and wondering what had gone wrong between him and … between him and the only woman he ever loved. Fifteen months after Sydney suffers the tragic loss of her husband and children, she’s returned to Gansett to figure out what’s next, and that may very well be a rekindled love affair with the one man from her past she’s never forgotten. But is she ready for a second chance at love?
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The whole Gansett series is wonderful great reading love everything from Marie
This is a great series. I guess it proves it’s all about timing.
This 3rd book’s story line was good, kind of boring, & all over place. I felt sorry for Sydney. I really liked how Sydney stood up to her parents. I really enjoyed how Luke helped the McCarthys. I really enjoyed the updates on Maddie & Janey. I really liked how this story talked about Grant & Ned. I really liked the ending. If this story was about Sydney & Luke alone this story would have been boring to me.
Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over: https://margaretmcgaffeyfisk.com/category/reviews/
For a small place, there sure are a lot of love stories on Gansett Island, and each with a different path. Ready for Love picks up a year after Joe and Janey found their much-delayed happiness, but though Luke and Sydney had even longer to come back to this moment, their tale has little in common with the previous book.
Sydney has been coming to the island since her teenage years, but though she met, and loved, Luke back then, she wasn’t mature enough to see beyond her parents’ prejudices. Instead, she married someone else, had two wonderful kids, and lived a full life with summers on the island as a minor part of that. Still, she never forgot Luke or got over her regret at how she’d left one summer and returned the next time married to someone else, never giving Luke the breakup he deserved.
Then fate deals an awful blow as a drunk driver kills her family and injures her, leaving Sydney devastated.
All this happens in the backstory. We join the present when, a year after the first time Luke came to check on Sydney in secret, he’s back pulling his boat onto her beach so he can stand guard over her grief. Only Sydney hasn’t been ignorant of his visits as he supposed, something he learns when she calls him on it, finally ready to recognize his presence.
Their story is complicated with trust issues, grief, and expectations, but it’s a beautiful one as Luke tries to move forward while everyone helpfully reminds him how destroyed he was the last time she left him. Sydney is no better as she tries to make her way back to her first love without feeling guilty about finding happiness a second time despite the deaths of her children and husband. The guilt is also because her ties to Luke in memory stayed true throughout her marriage. She was never unfaithful in thought or word, so did not betray her husband, but neither did the past fade as it might have.
Nor does all this happen in isolation as the community of friends we’ve come to know meet to tease, support, and challenge each other, especially since Janey and Joe’s wedding is only two weeks away.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I like all the different paths to love these stories tell, and Ready for Love both has a complete story and several others running in parallel. Even in Luke and Sydney’s story alone, though, there are many threads I appreciated.
Doubt is an aspect, but when it would have been easy for doubt to overwhelm trust, I very much enjoyed how their understanding of each other wins out. Which is not to say doubt plays no part, because it absolutely does, but it’s not the simple things where it shows, but in multilayered ones where some level of mistrust makes sense even without considering their past.
This is a powerful, complex, supportive love story that swept me in. It has open-door intimate scenes, tragedy, and a faithful dog. Buddy is both an emotional crutch for Sydney, and a proper dog who scratches and whines at a closed door rather than a caricature. As much as the book’s about two people renewing a lost love, there’s love of family, found and blood, and active change in more than just the main characters. It was what I wanted to read at this moment, and Marie Force delivered.
I was so ready for Luke and Sydneys story. These two have a history and after Sydney becomes a widow and returns to Gansett Island Luke just cant stay away. A beautiful story of hope and love. More of Mac and Maddie, a second chance at love for Ned and we get a little information on Grant whose story is next, an interesting one that will be. Loving this series so much
Love all of Marie’s booka
3.5 Stars
I’m a sucker for a good second-chance book, and Ready For Love fits that criteria perfectly!
Luke and Sydney met and fell in love when they were teenagers. For a few summers, they were pretty inseparable. But one summer, Sydney didn’t return, and that was because she had met someone while in college, someone that her parents felt was a better fit for her. Tragedy brought her back to Gansett Island seventeen years later, so that she could heal. Luke kepts tabs on her from afar, but the following summer, they reconnect.
I loved how much Luke loved Sydney, and how Sydney overcame so much, including her parents’ judgmental opinions.
While most will love the fact that there is a lot of revisiting the other characters from previous books, I found that too much of the story was taken up by other couples. Don’t get me wrong; I really like catching up with previous characters, but so much of the book was this, that it detracted from Luke and Sydney’s story for me. That being said, I loved them, and look forward to more from Gansett Island!
I enjoyed this book. I have to confess that the only reason I bought it was because I liked Fool For Love so much that I wanted more of Joe and Janey’s story. And I got it. Now I’m addicted to this series and the residents of Gansett Island.
I loved Luke, but I’m not that fond of Sydney. She seems a little self centred and materialistic at times. And whiny. Yes, she lost her family but she was a little too needy for my liking.