The Long Way Home

Welcome back to St. Dennis, a quaint seaside small town where you are bound to find friendship and love in the most unlikely of places. Once you come for a visit, you may decide you never want to leave. Take Ellis Chapman, the daughter whose father and fiance' have been convicted in one of the biggest Ponze schemes in New York. Now having lost not only her home, her job, her car, her money and her love, she is looking for a place to simply disappear from the limelight and publicity that is haunting her in New York. Taking help from her close friend, Ellie learns that her mother who died of cancer has left her a home in St. Dennis. Since they were divorced at the time, it escaped being sold off with the rest of her family's assets.

There is only one small stipulation in her mother's will, that Ellie live in the house at least six months before selling it. Working with Jesse Enright, the local attorney in St. Dennis, she creates a new identity of Ellie Ryder and learns that will the right money management the funds her mother left behind to care for the house and property may last through the six months she needs to stay there. In that time, she hopes to update it to make it more profitable to sell and hopefully find a way to restore her life. What she doesn't plan on is the house needing more repairs than she has money to pay for.

She finds Cameron O'Connor, the local caretaker that has been maintaining the house and grounds for many years working with her grandmother Lilly when she lived in the home many years before and later her mother, Lynley when she was living there while undergoing treatment for cancer. Cameron learns that the house he has always wanted to own has now been sold but doesn't know that Ellie is related to the family and that is just how she wants things until she can arrange for the house to be sold. She hopes her identity will remain elusive and that she can put her six months in and sell the home. Will she be able to maintain her secret or will her past catch up to her even in a small town like St. Dennis?

In the latest novel from the Chesapeake Diaries series from Mariah Stewart, The Long Way Home captures the same characters from the books we've come to love and adore, Jesse Enright is the local attorney who is married to Brooke, the local owner and creator of the town's delicious cupcakes. Once again the small town feel is apparent from the first page as the novel opens once again with a diary entry from the oldest town resident Grace who owns the local newspaper and the town's historic inn. New characters now intermingle with the charming residents that Mariah has so lovingly introduced us to in each of her consecutive novels and my heart warms whenever Mariah launches a new novel in the series. The saddest part is when this series will come to a close, but thankfully there is another waiting in the wings when this one ends. So it gives this reader peace to know that the story will continue for a bit more longer with an excerpt to At The River's Edge at the conclusion to tease us until it publishes.

I received The Long Way Home by Mariah Stewart compliments of TLC Book Tours and Ballantine Books for my honest review. I am always excited to learn when another novel in this series is published because to me, it's like returning home to place where love, peace and friendship resides and I can escape my routine life to escape into virtual one for a brief time. I only wish St. Dennis were as real as the residents that Mariah Stewart so lovingly breathed life into. I, myself would move there instantly and open my own bookstore and join in the fun of living among real friends and true down to earth people. I easily rate this one a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. I highly recommend it and if you haven't read any of the books in the series, please pick them all up. You'll definitely want all of them if you love small town romance with friendship and great characters that will captivate you from the very first page. This one can be read as a stand alone however. but once you read this one, you 'll want them all.

For more information about The Long Way Home, Mariah Stewart and where to pick up a copy of this book today, please click on the links below:

The Long Way Home by Mariah Stewart

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To read more reviews on The Long Way Home from the TLC Book Tour, please click here. 

The Chesapeake Diaries Series:
 #1 Coming Home
#2 Home Again
#3 Almost Home
#4 Hometown Girl
#5 Home for the Summer
#6 The Long Way Home
#7 At the River's Edge (Coming Soon)