Three generations of love affairs collide in the second in the Emerald Lake series. One has a tragic ending, another is pending further review, while the last is definitely an HEA.

Rebecca Campbell has been running away from confrontation and bad boyfriend decisions all her life. Finally ending up as a manager at Emerald Lake Inn and about to marry her good friend Stu Murphy, she is content until she finds him the night before the wedding kissing his best friend John.

The next morning, she’s stunned to find that Stu has decamped, leaving behind a note saying he’s going into seclusion to get his head straightened out. He’ll be back when he does. And, oh, yes, she’s not to tell anyone why he walked away. As if that weren’t enough, to her horror, he’s left her holding the bag on their wedding day as well as in charge of running the inn and putting on the local community’s Tapping of the Maples Festival.

As she copes with Stu’s parents, her friends and family, and stoically absorbs the recriminations she harbors and others give her, Rebecca meets Stu’s brother Sean, who thinks she knows more about why his brother left and wants to get it out of her.

Living in the inn’s attic bridal suite, Rebecca, going a little out of her mind with all her responsibilities, encounters the paranormal in the shape of unnatural coldness and loud noises in the bedroom. Sean, nearby in his bedroom, hears the noises too, but can’t help her account for them. While talking to Sean and Stu’s grandmother, Rebecca learns of the woman’s unhappy love affair that produced her son Bill. Could the room house the ghost of the older woman’s true love?

Meanwhile, as Rebecca tries to regain her footing and to resist her attraction to Sean, Bill and his wife are also having marital problems that involve Sean and a secret he and his mother have shared for years. In fact, Sean still retains physical and psychological scars from their past.

Riley makes Rebecca’s journey in finding and accepting her stronger self compelling and believable, but leaves a few dangling ends, including a previous lover who reappears, looks like he will cause trouble, and then disappears.

Sean, a wonderfully conflicted romantic hero, for all of his deep family involvement, isn’t quite believable since he can’t figure out Stu’s dilemma even though he says they’ve been very close their entire lives.

However, adding depth to a story that would be run-of-the-mill otherwise, are the subplots about the grandmother and her lover, and Bill and his wife. Since Rebecca is an on-looker for both of these, unfortunately, the focus is diffused often from the main story making some jumps from one plot to the other confusing.

These glitches notwithstanding Riley writes a gentle story sure to please readers who relish romances set in small town America.