Review: Grace Unexpected by Gale Martin

Grace Unexpected by Gale Martin

Publisher: BookTrope Editions 

Pages: 276 

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say “I do”. In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she’s unnerved to learn that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy. When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to her new plan – dubbed the Shaker Plan – despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, a venerable anthropology professor. Both men have ample charms and soul mate potential to test her newfound Shaker-style self-control, and Grace appears to be on the fast track to a marriage proposal… until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.


Kritters Thoughts:  Grace, the main character, starts the book in a Shaker Village with her very pregnant sister in law; shortly after her trip she finds herself single again and decides that maybe the Shakers do it right with the celibacy.  Unfortunately for her, right after she makes this pledge to follow the Shaker Plan, she meets two great guys.  

For me, both of the guys in contention were all that great.  One was quite a bit older and the other younger, they were a little to the extreme side of things.  I wasn't rooting for either, I was hoping for a third option.  

On the other hand, I loved her work situation and it was so fun to have a book where the work life takes center stage to what is going on in the character's personal life.  Her co workers were entertaining but honest and their quirks made me appreciate my own work situation a bit more!     

For a book in the chick lit genre, this one was a little on the bland side.  No matter that I knew what was coming next, the book just didn't have the excitement that I was hoping for when I come to read a chick lit.  I wanted a little more of the Shaker involvement in the book - it could have added a little more quirk.

Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from BookTrope.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.