Day 18 — Hearts Aweigh by Shannon Sue Dunlap
★★★★☆ — grumpy sunshine · forced proximity · found family
Daily Recommendation · No. 018
★★★★☆ 4/5 stars
Closed door / No spice | Christian romance
grumpy sunshineforced proximityfound family
Sometimes all it takes is a cruise ship full of meddling seniors to remind you that love has its own itinerary.
Hearts Aweigh follows Abby, an optimistic and open-hearted woman who finds herself aboard the MS Buckingham, and Spencer, a buttoned-up and slightly oblivious man on a mission to persuade his mother to abandon her cruise ship retirement and come home. What neither of them planned for was each other. Complicating and enlivening the whole journey is a group of septuagenarian matchmakers called the Shippers, who have decided Abby needs a husband and are absolutely not open to negotiation on the matter. There is also a blackmail mystery woven through the story that gives the plot a little extra crunch beyond the romance.
What I loved most here is the Shippers. They bring this wonderfully chaotic, found-family energy that makes the whole book feel warmer and bigger than a typical two-person love story. They meddle with such gleeful confidence that you can not help but root for them even when you are rolling your eyes at them. It is the kind of ensemble that elevates a good romance into something genuinely cozy and fun.
Abby and Spencer themselves are a classic pairing done well. She is sunshine in human form and he is all stiff edges and good intentions, and watching them slowly dismantle each other's assumptions is genuinely satisfying. The blackmail subplot keeps things from ever feeling slow, and the cruise ship setting gives the forced-together dynamic a natural, breezy logic. This is the second book in the Love Overboard series, but I read it without any prior context and never felt lost, so do not let that stop you from picking it up.
Not a 5-star read for me, but a rating is just one reader's experience. If the tropes above are your thing, this could be exactly what you're looking for. I'd rather share it than gatekeep it.
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