Jill Shalvis is back with the sixth installment of her beloved Sunrise Cove series, The Summer Escape. Shalvis is a perennial favorite and reliable storyteller, drawing on the robust, extended families in her Lake Tahoe world. If you follow her on social media, you’ll know she’s got a couple of children and grandchildren, and they all seem to enjoy spending time with one another, so when she writes a story about large, loving families – both by birth and by choice – I believe her.

Here we meet private investigator Anna Moore, who is called upon to put her skills to work when she and her sister, Wendy, find an old gold coin in a box that belonged to their late father, Louis. After taking it to a pawn shop to see if it has any value, they get more than they bargained for because now the community is convinced Louis was a cat burglar with something to hide.

Owen Harris is an adventurer for hire. He’s certain that nineteenth century coin on the news belongs to his great-aunt and the woman on tv knows more than she’s letting on. He devises a plan to get his aunt’s property back by hiring Anna to investigate a whole cache of missing coins. A ‘keeping his enemy close’ philosophy that Anna wants no part of. Fortunately, working together to find the truth is the better solution than working separately, so they team up. It doesn’t take long for them to see behind the curtain of each other’s hearts and minds, or for them to give into their inevitable chemistry.

The charming nature of this story is both its benefit and its downfall. The benefit is that the characters are relatable, quirky, and interesting, and so is the mystery. The downfall is that it’s a little slow. When these lengthy extended families are in a scene together, it slows down the momentum when I would’ve preferred racing through the story, especially as we have two adventurous leads, and it feels as though all the decisions they make are workshopped and agreed upon by committee. It’s not bad, it’s just a lot. I could’ve also done with less Wendy, her pregnancy cravings, and live-stream earbud conversation.

After so many series with big families, I wonder how Shalvis would do writing about two only-children who make it to the end of the story without the assistance of a big cast of characters? We may never know. But I do know that I like the path her mind takes in these flirty contemporary romances. If you like sweet, slow burn contemporaries with adventurous people in a huge family, The Summer Escape will be your, well, summer escape.