Author: Patience Griffin
Series: Sweet Home, Alaska #2
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Romance
Format: Kindle ARC
No. of Pages: 316
Date of Publication: November 30, 2021
My Rating: 4 Stars
Sisters Victoria and McKenna St. James have been living comfortably on their trust funds in Dallas when their uncle Monty, keeper of the purse strings, decides to push them out of their comfort zones: they will spend one year away from it all in Alaska or lose their inheritance. The sisters are initially aghast, but they aren't the type to back down from a challenge!
Victoria is sent to a primitive homestead outside the tiny town of Sweet Home, while the outdoorsy McKenna will be stuck working in a stuffy bank in Anchorage. Both sisters have a rocky transition. Victoria was prepared to forgo highlights and lattes, but not electricity or running water! Fortunately she has hunky wilderness guide Jesse Montana for daily lessons on everything from planting a garden to shooting game—she even joins the quilting circle in Sweet Home—and revels in her accomplishments. Meanwhile, McKenna feels trapped within the concrete walls of the bank. She's a free spirit who loves to travel, not sit at a desk, even if her sexy boss Luke McAvoy helps her discover that she has a head for business and loves using it to help customers.
By year's end, Victoria and McKenna will have to decide whether home sweet home might be right there in Alaska after all.
MY THOUGHTS:
Victoria and McKenna St. James want for nothing. They have lost their parents and are in the loving care of their uncle Monty. There is nothing that they need or want that won't be in their hands just about instantly.
Uncle Monty thinks the girls are just too spoiled. He makes very specific arrangements for each of them to move to Alaska for a year and to learn how to exist without their unlimited trust funds. He sets the girls up seperately. Victoria will learn to create a homestead, and McKenna will be working at a bank. Each of the girls will have a mentor - Jesse Montana will be working with Tori and Luke McAvoy will be working with McKenna.
Right from the outset the girls have challenges. McKenna is more of the outside type and is comfortable in a nice pair of jeans. Instead, she is set up in a deluxe apartment and will be working at a bank, and that includes a wardrobe change to reflect her new job.
For Tori, she will be creating a homestead. She has a cabin, but it barely has anything, including not having power or running water. One of her challenges is the fact that she has severe asthma and will not be able to use her nebulizer. Jesse is determined to teach her everything she needs to know about homesteading and Tori cannot imagine how she will survive. Jesse doubts Tori will be up to the task, especially as he has a job that will soon take him away.
Bottom line - Tori really likes Jesse and McKenna really likes Luke. But, will it always be business first for Jesse and Luke, especially when they each start to feel more than drawn to the women? In this engaging read I was more drawn to Tori as I could not imagine being in the middle of Alaska, with almost nothing to sustain me, and the outside being full of predators. Then the fact that it would be next to impossible for Tori and McKenna to communicate, which was utterly difficult as the two are so very close. It became a story of grit and challenges that were difficult to imagine.
I really enjoyed this story as the girls learned to cope with all of the changes they faced, all while they found love along the way. I especially liked it when the four of them were able to spend time together working on things. Once Upon a Cabin is the second book in the Sweet Home, Alaska series. The first book is One Snowy Night, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading, but each book does do well as standalone novels.
Many thanks to Berkley and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.
At nearly the same time, she started commuting three and half hours a day for her dream engineering job. To pass the time on the long drive, she got hooked on audiobooks—especially books with love stories. Within a couple of years, she was writing stories of her own. It was no surprise to her family and friends when she combined her love of quilting, her small town roots, and her obsession with her Scottish heritage.
She has gained some recognition with her September 11th Story Quilt which has toured the country as the property of the Pentagon. She has teamed up with QT Fabrics for an extensive line of fabrics to accompany her novels and patterns. She has a master's degree in nuclear engineering but spends her days writing stories about hearth and home, and dreaming about the fictional small towns of Gandiegow, Scotland and Sweet Home, Alaska.
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