The Mariposa Hotel
A Tangerine Street Romance
(a novel in three parts)
Welcome to Tangerine Street
Tangerine Street is a must-see tourist stop with a colorful mix of one-of-a-kind boutiques, unique restaurants, eclectic museums, quaint bookstores, and exclusive bed-and-breakfasts. The Mariposa Hotel, a new resort, has revitalized Seashell Beach, bringing new life to the sleepy beach town. In the charming gardens of the hotel sits a three-hundred-year-old wishing well transported from Mexico. One toss of the coin, a sincere wish, and lives are changed forever…
Other books in the Tangerine Street Romance series:
The Fortune Café
The Boardwalk Antiques Shop
Review
I enjoyed going back to Tangerine Street and peeking into the lives of employees at the Mariposa Hotel.
The first story is about Mari, who is a maid at the hotel, and is also taking online classes to realize her dream of being an attorney. She doesn’t have much time for men (especially with an ex that treated her badly) until she meets the US Marshall and he sparks something in her to give men another chance.
The second story is not really about an employee – Ridley steps in as concierge as a favor to his long time friend, and manager of the Mariposa. He is really a photographer and is there to capture a surfing contest. But he meets Brooke, a plastic surgeon whose passion is helping those in 3rd world countries and are born with cleft palates. Needless to say neither of them is who the other thinks they are.
The last story is about Raegan who is the events coordinator for the hotel (and she is friends with Mari from story 1) who is organizing a charity event for a well known producer, but she doesn’t realize who he is when they first meet. He has issues of his own with his sister’s past behavior and trying to keep his niece from going down the wrong path.
All of these stories have strong women who realize that maybe there is more to live than work/school and perhaps love can balance out the work aspect. Since all of these are novellas, the relationships move rather quickly (in a matter of days) but they are all clean romantic interludes.
The only “issue” I had with this book is the flow from story to story. While they are all independent of each other, Mari appears in all 3 stories. Now normally that wouldn’t be a big deal. But as I am reading each story it seems like the time frames happen one after the other, which would seem normal. However, in story 1, Mari is fired from her job as a maid yet in story 2 and 3 she is still a maid. I think if they had put this story last it would have had a better flow time wise (imagining all 3 taking place over a few months time span) because when Mari pops up in story 2 and 3, I couldn’t figure out how she would be there if she was fired in story 1. If the events that happened in stories 2 and 3 were mentioned in story 1, maybe it would have made more sense, but I truly imagined story 1 taking place in say April, story 2 in May and story 3 in June (or something like that). So you can see where it might feel weird to the reader to have Mari show up as a maid when we know she was fired in story 1!
Other than that the book was an enjoyable read and a great addition to the Tangerine Street series. I give it 4 paws up
