Contemporary
Virgin River, Book 10 - Moonlight Road
By Dottie
Mar 1, 2010 - 2:58:11 PM

At thirty-six, Aiden Riordan, an OB/GYN doctor, has spent fourteen years in the Navy, before deciding to leave it, despite his brothers’ protests.  But he felt like there were things missing in his life, like a wife and family.  At twenty-eight, he was married for three months to Annalee, who destroyed everything they owned due to her insane mood swings.  Aiden is currently between jobs and visiting his older brother Luke, who lives in Virgin River with his wife Shelby.  They are expecting their first child before the middle of summer.  Aiden is renting one of Luke’s cabins.  There are five brothers all together.

  Erin, a lawyer, had decided to escape to the mountains for the summer, trying to find a way to achieve a serene acceptance of what life has thrown at her.  She needs to learn how to slow down, relax and enjoy doing nothing; getting away from all the pressures of her professional life.  At the age of eleven, Erin became the woman of the house when her mother died, leaving her to care for her grieving father, Marcie, her four-year-old sister and Drew, her two-year-old brother.  After school, she had a load of chores to do besides caring for the family.  She paid more attention to their needs than her own, making sure they had good grades and did not live on junk food.  In addition, staying on the honor roll at school left her little time for a boyfriend, so she rarely went out and skipped all the high school events.  At twenty-two, Erin lost her father and gained custody of her siblings.  At thirty-six now, she has accomplished a lot; she has a sterling reputation in a successful firm, specializing in tax and estate law.  Her brother Drew has completed medical school with honors, is now an orthopedic resident and, at the age of twenty-seven, lives with his fiancée.  Her sister had been married to an injured marine, who lingered in a nursing home in a vegetative state for years before dying.  She is remarried to her late husband’s best friend and they are expecting their first child.  They own the rundown cabin on the mountaintop in which Erin is now staying.  With her brother-in-law Ian’s permission, she had an engineer look at the rundown cabin and then she hired a local builder Paul Haggerty to remodel it.  She feels as if she is missing something in life.

Aiden enjoys hiking and while out hiking, he sees a cabin, which he believes is abandoned.  With his wild hair and his beard stubble, he knows he looks rough.  However, he never expected to startle the beautiful woman so bad that she screams and hits her head on the deck railing, knocking herself out.  Coming to her rescue, he carries her inside and bandages her wound.  The longer she stays unconscious, the more she concerns him and he is determined to take her to the local hospital to be checked out.   When she awakens, she sees him and starts screaming again.  It takes some doing, but she finally agrees to let him take her to the hospital, which is forty minutes away.  As she heals, he is around her quite often.  Their desire for each other grows, but then trouble arrives, which may break up this happy couple.

MOONLIGHT ROAD, the tenth book in author extraordinaire Robyn Carr’s VIRGIN RIVER series, is an emotionally riveting contemporary romance.  In this book, Ms. Carr deals with many emotional situations, like Down’s syndrome and hysterectomy in such a manner that the reader feels for the characters involved and receives an education at the same time.  Her characters seem to step right off the page.  The reader is taken through a range of emotions; laughing aloud one moment and near tears the next.  Ms. Robyn Carr is an author that reaches for the heart and touches it.  I have enjoyed all the novels in this series so far and I look forward to the next book in the series.  Run out and grab your own copy of MOONLIGHT ROAD.  You won’t regret it!  The problem is you can’t read just one of these books.