Sweet Home Alaska by Jennifer Snow is the first romance novel in her new Wild Coast series. She’s already got a series set in Alaska (Wild River) and it’s currently a popular setting (Megan Crane, Samanthe Beck and Jackie Ashenden have all published books set there over the last year). I liked the idea of a female coastguard captain as a heroine which is what intrigued me to pick up this story – it was okay but won’t go on my re-read list for reasons I’ll detail below.

Skylar Beaumont is coming home to Port Serenity on an assignment as Captain of the coastguard, having recently passed her academy exams. She’s following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather, though she hadn’t exactly wanted to come back to Port Serenity. Her memories of the place are painful, mostly due to the breakup of her teenage romance with Dex Wakefield. She and Dex were going to go into the coastguard academy together but in their last year of high school, Dex had become closed off and they’d broken up. Their relationship had been a secret, due to a long standing feud between the Beaumont and Wakefield families, but that hadn’t mattered in the end as they’d gone off to pursue different futures. Or at least Skylar did. Dex didn’t left Port Serenity after all. Is Skylar ready to face Dex again and could things work out differently this time?

Well, Skylar and I got off on the wrong foot right at the beginning of the novel when she drives her car into the ocean upon seeing her very grown up and handsome ex-boyfriend Dex. For someone who has such a lot of responsibility on her shoulders, it just didn’t sit well with me that she’d be so distracted that she’d forget to stop her car and would drive off the dock. Then, the author makes a curious choice when Skylar visits her cousin (shortly after getting her car pulled from the ocean) for a girl’s night out which is totally fine – except she thinks of how they used to do it in high school “when they’d had the metabolism for such a dinner” as if, six years later and in her mid-twenties, a young woman’s metabolism would be so different. I can understand using this reference for women meeting in their forties or fiftiess but in your twenties? No, that just doesn’t ring true to me. So, unfortunately these, along with some other story choices, left me hesitant to open up and really believe in these characters.

Early in the story we find out exactly why Dex pulled away from Skylar in high school. He had an epileptic seizure and his condition was a secret that only his family knew. Instead of confiding in Skylar he broke up with her because he was worried she would ditch her chances at a future career in the coastguard to stay with him, making the choice to not tell her and to let her think he just wasn’t interested in her anymore. He works now as a volunteer rescue boatman (as many fishermen do along the coast) to search for missing sailors, and has inherited enough money that he doesn’t need to work for pay. He’s in the process of getting a therapy dog to help him become more independent, and his sister Isla lives with him on his houseboat. The reader is told that Isla and Skylar don’t get along, though I wasn’t able to figure out exactly why, other than the traditional family feud.

Skylar and Dex obviously can’t avoid each other in this small coastal town so they begin to rekindle their friendship and their love affair (despite Dex not coming clean about his epilepsy right away, though he does eventually tell her). But the truth remains that Skylar is looking for an assignment elsewhere and Dex can’t see himself moving away. This puts a time limit on their developing relationship unless one or the other is willing to compromise. As they spend time together, their outlook changes and they figure out how to get a happy ending, though there is a loose thread left hanging that made me re-read the last bit a few times to figure out if I’d missed it (I couldn’t find it so I’m left guessing).

I’ll admit I did warm up to Skylar in the second half of the book and the romantic relationship is handled well. There is some heat between them and the story earns its ‘warm’ rating. The epilepsy storyline was also clearly researched, including Dex’s search for (and finding of) a therapy dog. The setting is typical small town with the added benefit of being on the coast, and there are some scenes showing off the coastguard’s capabilities. There is some tension between Skylar and her father – who is also a coast guard captain (her mother died of pancreatic cancer when Skylar was young, but that isn’t dwelled upon) – the type you would expect when a parent and child are thrust into competing career positions. That is also resolved well. Overall I was content with the final product, but there will have to be some really interesting hooks to get me to pick up the next in the series.

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