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The latest book from prolific author Susan Wiggs tries to do too many things and succeeds at few of them. The first part pits poor but smart and ambitious high school valedictorian/surfer girl Nikki against her evil, rich classmate and his equally nefarious family members. It seems like Wiggs is setting up a suspenseful David vs. Goliath battle, with family secrets added in for spice. But no, after Nikki goes off-script for her graduation speech, derailing her college dreams, the book jumps 15 years ahead. Now she is 33, heartbroken and penniless after limited pro-surfing success and a lot of hand-to-mouth living in Australia. So now that Nikki is back home we're going to pick up the good vs. evil subplot, since the villainous family is still in charge of the town, right? Nope, we're going to band together with the salt of the earth locals to save the vintage trailer park that her father runs. And fall in love again. And, in the last few chapters, passively overhear something that allows her to finally take down the bad guys. A host of secondary characters who appear to have promising arcs are never or rarely heard from again, and the love interest is problematic to me (he's a cop). The only plot point that resonated with me was the relationship between Nikki and her single father, which is tenuous at the book's start but improves markedly yet realistically by the end.I may be asking to much from a literal beach read, but I know that Wiggs is capable of much more, e.g., [b:The Apple Orchard 16074553 The Apple Orchard (Bella Vista Chronicles, #1) Susan Wiggs https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388276273l/16074553.SX50.jpg 18171290] and [b:The Beekeeper's Ball 18528409 The Beekeeper's Ball (Bella Vista Chronicles, #2) Susan Wiggs https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398188002l/18528409.SY75.jpg 26234058].
