Since I have enjoyed Robyn Carr in the past, I have much of her backlist in the TBR pile. Down by the River is the first book I’ve read in her Grace Valley series, and though it was pleasant, I didn’t feel like I really got to know any of the characters very intimately. I finished the book feeling that, in this case, less would definitely be more.

The plot of this book revolves very loosely around June Hudson, now unexpectedly pregnant and living with her retired, ex-DEA boyfriend Jim. I say loosely because only about a third of the story, possibly less, is from June’s point of view. Her aunt Myrna, a well-known author, has a new/old flame, a man who has been writing to her for quite some time and now wants to arrange a meeting in person. Nancy, June’s old rival, the girl who stole her boyfriend and married him, is now in the middle of a stressful situation. Her twin boys were injured in the previous book and she is taking care of them and trying to manage on a tight budget. Nancy’s relationship with her husband, Chris, is very tense. New to the town is Erline, a young woman with three children whose stoner husband has gone AWOL. And Harry Shipton, the new Presbyterian minister everyone loves, is going through a personal crisis. Things are always hopping in Grace Valley.

Carr has an extremely readable prose style, and the story moved along at a good clip. All of the main characters were people you would want to know in real life: good, kind, honorable, helpful, and hardworking. A couple of characters had some serious problems such as addiction and rage, but their situations were explained with such detail and compassion that you couldn’t help but feel for them. The problems these people faced were realistic and even occasionally dire, without ever being melodramatic.

However, despite these good points, the book was flawed in at least two ways. The first flaw was Carr’s limited characterization. The book was filled with so many secondary characters, each with their individual woes, that it was hard to keep track of everyone and also hard to develop real feeling for them. Any one of their problems – abandonment, abuse, anger, and fear of intimacy – would have made for fascinating reading had it received proper treatment. But most of the problems were dealt with in this fashion: the character would be introduced, the problem would become apparent over time, and some noble character would step into the fray and make it all better. You never felt the pain of the individual characters too strongly because you never really got to know them. And before things got too intense, another character would do a heroic deed and save the day.

The second problem is related to the first. Grace Valley is the perfect small town. Just perfect. Bad things happen, but when they do the community bonds together to solve the problem, make things better and succor the widow and orphan. Now a strong community and active volunteerism are both wonderful things, but sometimes it seemed like Carr was so enamored with the way things should be that she ignored the way things usually are. Most of the time total strangers don’t jump right in and solve others’ problems. Most of the time people don’t create jobs out of the blue just to help the less fortunate. Life just isn’t that neat and rewarding.

This book isn’t an inspirational, but it does present a community of people who have a religious faith (put into practice) and who do talk about it. Personally, I appreciated this glimpse of people have have actual religious beliefs, but this is probably not the book for readers who dislike a more conservative, traditional outlook on life.

Finally, if you’re expecting a romance out of this story, you’ll be doomed to disappointment. June does have a relationship with Jim, and they do have both some romantic moments and a small conflict, but that conflict feels fairly artificial. The reader knows from the beginning that they belong together and will be together. In fact, they are together from page one, and even though they are a new couple, their interactions have an old, married feel to them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not a traditional romance in any sense.

Down by the River is the kind of story I’d recommend for readers who like small town, large ensemble casts like Jan Karon’s Mitford or Miss Read stories. It’s sweet, it’s thoughtful, it’s full of characters who are nice and kind and good, and the problems that crop up are serious without being sensationalized. But the over-abundance of sub-plots were both too much and too little for this reader. Sometimes less is more.