Customer Reviews

74 Seaside Avenue (Cedar Cove, Book 7)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove series. Reading each book is like sitting down to cake and coffee with friends and catching up on the town gossip. Debbie has created an idyllic little town and peopled it with people you can come to truly care about. Get involved with their problems, agonize over their dilemmas, and delight in their triumphs as their most intimate stories captivate your imagination.

The home of Teri and Bobby Polgar is the focal point of this addition to the series. As with all Cedar Cove books, the home is pictured on the cover, and Debbie tells us in her intro that this particular home just happens to be the one she shares with her real-life hubby.

The characters you have grown to love in previous entries are all moving forward. Olivia and Jack face a problem they never anticipated, Grace adjusts to married life and deals with her embarrassing past, Maryellen gets great news, Rachel finds herself in a troubling triangle, Sheriff Troy Davis reacquaints himself with a past love his daughter will not abide, and Linnette McAfee takes her broken heart and runs away. A dangerous kidnapping involves several residents and a cliffhanger ending sets the stage for Dave and Emily Flemming to share their story at 8 Sandpiper Way with readers in September, 2008.

If you like light romances with surprising twists and mysterious turns, you'll be charmed by this series and relish each new peek into the lives of the people of Cedar Cove.

If you love books that have a folksy, down home, what's happening in the neighborhood kind of feeling, then you'll love this series, including the newest addition - #7.

Honestly, Debbie writes just as if you were sitting there sharing a coffee and she was filling you in on all the happenings in Cedar Cove.

I don't know how she creates the intimacy she does, but honestly, you feel like one of the locals just catching up on the news.

And there's a lot of good news. The local hairdresser, on her own too long, unintentionally snags the wealthy successful International chess champion, and the sweet girl-next-door finally gives up on Cedar Cove and its men and heads back to the city, leaving her family still on the island. The turns and twists that these girls experience and all the other convolutions that occur in Cedar Cove are shared in such a comfortable, easy way that you feel like you're sitting in the beauty shop hearing it all face to face.

Debbie does a great job as usual on this entertaining book !

Teri Polgar thinks her husband, Chess Champion Bobby, is being overly protective of her. But he has good reason to - someone wants him to throw a match and has threatened to harm Teri if he doesn't. Despite the threat, Teri tries to go about her life normally - working at the hair salon and trying to play matchmaker between her sister Christie and Bobby's driver/bodyguard James. In the meantime, other residents of Cedar Cover are going through changes in their lives - Linette McAfee has left town and is trying to rebuild her life after Cal dumped her; Sheriff Troy Davis is starting to date after the death of his wife, much to the dismay of his daughter Megan, who desperately wants to have a baby; Rachel Pendergast can't understand why her relationship with Bruce Payton is changing when she knows she is in love with Nate Olsen; and Olivia Lockhart Griffin is facing a major health crisis.

"74 Seaside Avenue" is another nice entry in Debbie Macomber's ongoing Cedar Cove series. This is the seventh book in the series and you don't have to have read all of them to read this one, although it does help. The series is like an ongoing soap opera and it's always nice to catch up with favorite characters from past books. "74 Seaside Avenue" focuses on Teri and Bobby Polgar, an endearing if odd couple. While Bobby is one of my favorite characters in the series, I think Macomber could have done a better job with his dialogue. It's stilted, which I think is meant to show that he's not comfortable when he's out in public, but surely he's able to speak complete sentences around his wife at this point in their relationship. My favorite developing romance in this book is the one between Christie and James. Macomber's left readers hanging at the end of this book as to what happens between them and I can't wait to see what happens to them next. Macomber brings readers up to date on several characters and it's nice to have the Grace-Cliff-Will "triangle" come to an end. It's also nice to see that having played the Rachel-Nate-Bruce triangle over several books, Macomber brings it to a satisfying end (at least for me). It was also nice to see Linette grow and mature by the end of this book, although her actions still seem a little too hasty. Megan's worrying over her father's dating so soon after the death of her mother is well done. Megan is a bit selfish in wanting her father for herself, but it's understandable as she is still dealing with the loss of her mother. The Olivia health scar is a very real one for many women and kudos to Macomber for bringing it into the book.

"74 Seaside Avenue" is a nice, cozy read. My biggest complaint is that the Cedar Cove series already has a lot of characters and Macomber keeps adding more. It's hard to keep track of all the characters at this point. And it's a bit disappointing to have some characters that have figured prominently in other books in the series barely mentioned at all in this one. Allison and Anson show up in one brief chapter and that's it. Still, Macomber is a good writer who keeps you interested in all the characters old and new.

Debbie Macomber fans will love "74 Seaside Avenue".

For those of us hooked on Debbie Macomber's Cedar Grove series, this is one of the best, and that's saying something, as all are good and entertaining. But for some reason, I enjoyed this more.

Except for one highly improbable (but enjoyable anyway) plot line about a chess match and Russian threats, the book was a wonderful reunion with the characters we have come to know and love. And even the chess match reunites us with loveable hairdresser Tami and her intellectual powerhouse chess champion husband, Bobby.

There are some sad and serious issues in this book too, from lost love to life-threatening illness, but all are handled with Macomber's warm and compassionate style. On the last page of the book, I wanted the next--it's going to be hard to wait!

I should have been forwarned when an editorial review said it was "gossipy writing." I could not find a central plot to focus on as the story switched from one person to another carrying forward the lives of various people. It is well written, and I would recommend it for soap opera fans, but it is not my type novel.

The characters from Cedar Cove return like old friends. This book centers around Teri and her chess-playing husband, Bobby. Their story is not as compelling as some of the others, because they seem to be an unlikely couple who have very little in common, but the sub-plots are interesting. Rachel has two men interested in her and she has a hard time deciding which one she really loves. Troy Davis meets up with an old friend, but he's afraid to tell his daughter who disappoves of him dating so soon after the death of his wife. Linnette leaves town with a broken heart after Cal falls in love with someone else. Author Debbie Macomber spins these separate stories into an interesting whole and manages to set up intriguing situations for her next book in the series. One other complaint I have about this book is that natural disasters and diseases are thrown into the plot just to encourage some of the romances, and sometimes the situations seem forced and unrealistic. Other than that, the book is a fast read and it catches readers up on the lives of fictional people whom they've come to enjoy.

I loved the four first books in the Cedar Cove series. The fifth and sixth started to become a tiny bit repetitive and this seventh felt exactly that.

A lot of space - and time - is used to get up to date with the characters and their previous doings, which makes for a lot of repetition. I simply think the series should be based on reading the books in correct order; it seems impossible and somewhat amputated, in spite of the catching up, to start with, as in this last case, book 7!

Debbie Macomber writes well. Both the invention of small town Cedar Cove and the many interesting characters, who after a while seem almost like old friends, is excellent. I only think this series has gone on for long enough. Not only the up to date information in this book, but also further developments in peoples' lives, seemed repetitive. As if one had read it all before.

Many readers call the Cedar Cove series a soap opera. I think it's much above that, but at this point I may agree somewhat. A true sign of soap operas is that after a substantial number of episodes, they seem to go back to the beginning and start all over again.

Book 7 left many questions unanswered, but I'm not overly keen for the answers. Linnette and Pete? Probably. A new baby for Megan? Probably. Will Troy get his Faith in the end? Probably. And so on.

It's been an enjoyable stay in idyllic Cedar Cove but by now I'm ready to move on.

AS ALWAYS DEBBIE MACOMBER JUST BRINGS A STORY TO LIFE GREAT READ, AS ALL HER BOOKS ARE. LOVED ALL OF THE CEDAR COVE BOOKS AND I'VE READ EVERY ONE SO FAR. I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT ONE. HOPE YOU ENJOY IT TOO.

Love this series, but probably of all the Cedar Cove characters Bobby Polgar is my least favorite. Bobby is a little too nerdy for someone as sophisticated as Teri, but still the story wasn't boring. The storylines involving Rachel, Lynette and Olivia were my favorites. The teaser at the end of the book setting up the next book in the series definitely leaves you anticipating the next installment. Keep the books coming, Debbie!

I LOVE the Cedar Cove series and I am waiting anxiously for the 8th book! I started reading this series when I came across the 5th book in the grocery store and I was so engrossed in the characters and have a personal connection to the location, that I went online to Amazon and bought the first 4 books and then waited for the 6th and 7th book to be released. I don't want the story to end, it would be like moving away from people you love!