Member Reviews
Three cousins who don’t get along must figure out a way to make it work. Throw in a single handsome war vet who counsels vets, a scheming grandmother and her friend ,a family flower shop, small town drama and you have the makings of a story you can’t put down. Cousins Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorja, all have pasts that they must reconcile as they learn to tackle their demons to run their grandmother’s flower shop. As the story progresses, the women realize that family is everything.
I really enjoyed this story. I couldn’t put it down. Carolyn Brown adds her usual dash of humor throughout the story. The different personalities of the cousins were interesting, but my favorite character was Clinton. Poor Clinton is single and the focus of every single female in Wheeler County. The women try to woo him by cooking and bringing him food of which he shares with the cousins. There are a few tearful moments as secrets are revealed, so have tissues ready. This was a great read.
Three cousins, Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorja, are summoned back to their home town of Shamrock to help out in their Nana Irene's flower shop, the Lucky Shamrock. Irene’s friend and business partner, Ruby has fallen and broken her hip, and Irene needs to care for her.
All three girls left the small town and bad memories as soon as possible, planning never to return. Their parents may be scattered in the wind, but Irene wants her granddaughters to set aside their constant bickering and learn how to be a family.
Heartwarming, poignant, and inspiring, this story of family, community, and second chances is the perfect read for romance and women's fiction lovers of all ages..
The Lucky Shamrock by Carolyn Brown was a bit different than what I was expecting but it was still an incredible read! Set in the small town of Shamrock, it tells the heartwarming and sometimes heartaching tale of three cousins who find healing and love and fresh beginning in the very same town they ran away from.
Jorja is the religious person who is actually praying for redemption for the trauma in her past. Her story moved me the most. Behind the prim and proper and religion loving sweet woman lives a broken and hurting woman. The love and support of her cousins helped her to move from the darkness of the past and embrace a new future.
Anna Rose is the sassy and loud mouthed and spirited member of the trio. She believes living life dangerously and at its fullest. She wants to enjoy life. But even the most fierce woman can have sadness and insecurities that made her weary of settling down anywhere. But staying in Shamrock and spending time with her cousins and her grandma..she realises she doesn't want to run anymore. She can do her photography career from this loving town.
Taryn almost fled the town because she was unfairly given the reputation of being a Troublemaker while she just carried the burden of other people's mistakes. She is the most hesitant to stay in Shamrock. But the shop's new hire and ex vet Clinton may change her opinion. This the only romance angle that was explored in a bit details while the other cousins' love life was just hinted at the end. She is so sweet and kind and Warm and my heart hurt to see how she was misunderstood but I am so happy these awesome women got everything they deserve at the end.
I would say this book was more of a woman's fiction with the focus being how three mismatched people went from being reluctant helpers to greatest friends to each other's biggest supporters. This town has taken away a lot from them but they got it back..with their love, their tenacity and their strength. This is the kind of book that filled my heart with beautiful and hopeful and sweet feels and I loved spending some time with Shamrock.
I reviewed an early copy voluntarily
love the down home writing of Carolyn Brown. The many quaint sayings (such as, "You could talk a dead man into buying a second coffin) always remind me of some of the sayings my grandmother use to use. I love the Texas aspects also, because my husband and his family are from Texas.
This is a (women's) fiction book about three women who are cousins. They have returned home to take care of their grandmother's florist shop at her request. The three women are about as different as can be and haven't gotten along for some time. It doesn't take long before they figure out that Grandma Irene is scheming to make them come together as family once again.
All three women have trust issues due to men in their past. Men! Boo! Hiss! Actually there were several other female characters in this book that were also really bad. There is also one delightful man, Clinton. He's a wounded warrior currently battling to keep the town ladies away from him, even if all the dishes they bring him are greatly appreciated by the three cousins. He's a great guy that loves to help vets, babies, old women and especially one particular cousin.
This was a great fun, fast read and the characters will stay with me for some time.
Thanks to Montlake and NetGalley for the gifted copy. All thoughts are my own.
This is the first book I read by Carolyn Brown and I was not disappointed. The story follows three cousins who struggle with their own personal issues and are forced to work and live together by their grandmother who wants them to become a family again. The book focused more on the cousins’ journey, so was more on the side of women’s fiction than romance. I liked the individuality of the three women, but they needed each other in order to find their path of healing and needed the town’s and their grandmother’s help to find their roots. The way they supported each other should be an example to women on how to lean on and help each other. I was glad Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorja found their happily ever after.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of the book.
This book centres around three female cousins, Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorga, who are brought back together by their grandmother to manage her flower shop while she cares for an injured friend. To make matters more contentious, they are living together in the trailer in back of the shop since the apartment above the shop has been rented. The cousins are not at all happy about being back together. Though they used to work together in the shop when they were teenagers, they went their separate ways and couldn’t be more different, or so they believe. There is a lot of bickering, snark and general conflict at first, until they find a common goal.
Clinton, their grandmother’s tenant, who also delivers flowers for the shop, has enough troubles of his own to handle without being a referee for the three cousins. As a veteran, he is dealing with PTSD and is now running a non-profit to help his fellow veterans readapt to civilian life. To add to his troubles, the town’s single ladies are trying to catch his eye and reel him into a relationship. Funnily enough, the three cousins band together to ward off the very persistent ladies pursuing Clinton. As they work together, closely held secrets are revealed and the women become supportive of each other and begin to work as a team. Slowly but surely, they discover more about themselves and each other as they forge unbreakable bonds. Their story is fascinating, evokes both laughter and tears, and has a few interesting twists and turns that make it very enjoyable.
I received an ARC of this book via NetGalley and I am voluntarily leaving this honest review.
I usually fall in love with Carolyn Brown's cover and then I fell in love with the stories that make me smile and enjoy lovely places and likeable characters.
This is what I want to say about this book as it made me smile and feel good
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine
The Lucky Shamrock has three cousins coming together to help their grandmother by Carolyn Brown. This is the Carolyn Brown stories of late females who say exactly what they think sass and snark, personal issues to tackle and family to hold close. Taryn, Anna Rose, and Jorja come Shamrock, Texas to help run the Lucky Shamrock Flower Shop. While each of the women seem to have it all together at the beginning it isn’t long before you realize that they have their secrets and issues to be revealed and resolved.
This has romance, weddings, funerals, big surprise and some good fortune as these women bicker, love and grow individually and together. While there is some romance this is women’s fiction from beginning to end. You can’t go wrong with a Carolyn Brown book so read The Lucky Shamrock soon.
An ARC of the book was provided by the publisher through NetGalley which I voluntarily chose to read and reviewed. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Thank you Netgalley and Montlake Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of The Lucky Shamrock by Carolyn Brown.
Nana Irene had recruited cousins, Anna Rose, Taryn and Jorja to help out at the Lucky Shamrock Florist in Shamrock, Texas. Nana Irene is going to take time off of work to help her dear friend Ruby after her surgery. She had also hired local veteran, Clint, as a full time employee. He lives above the florist shop and is the most eligible bachelor in town. Each cousin is dealing with their own personal issues. They learn from each other how to overcome these obstacles. This is a small town romance and with a little bit of luck, a start over again story.
Three cousins who I named Ms. Pious, Ms. Peace, and Ms. Party are ordered to work at their grandmother’s flower shop in Shamrock, TX.
I can never read a CB boom without bursting out laughing.
Dark times turn into light times, the bad people get what they deserve, and the luck the cousins seek, is not too far off.
It’s a rollicking read with carping cousins, feisty elders, and a coven of town meanies.
I giggled at Nettie the Busybody and the image of Ruby and Irene shooting at rattlers.
I’ve stayed in Shamrock so it was fun to relate to the locale.
Three cousins Taryn, Anna Rose, and Jorja are going to Texas to help run The Lucky Shamrock flower shop for their grandmother.
The girls each have a lot going on in their personal lives and for me there was too much at times. Reading it was for me bumpy and slow at times.
The cousins have to learn how to live together and that was at times a tangles mess.
Thank you to NetGalley, Carolyn Brown and Montlake for the Arc of The Lucky Shamrock. This is my personal review.
I usually find myself hooked on a Carolyn Brown novel from the very start, but that didn't happen with her latest release, The Lucky Shamrock, which starts off with 3 female cousins, Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorja arriving in town, living together in a single wide trailer, and engaging in non-stop, petty and not-so-petty bickering for the first third of the novel. While the book improved as the bickering lessened, these three cousins are spending their summer working at their grandmother Irene's titular flower shop with her male employee, Clinton, a disabled vet, while Nana Irene is keeping her best friend company after her hip surgery, and you'd be hard pressed to find 3 more different women. While billed as a romance, I'd bill it as Christian women's fiction, and it was a 3-star read for this reviewer.
Then there are the triggers, and there are a lot of them: drugged teen rape (off-screen), PTSD, mental, verbal, and physical abuse, marital cheating and child abandonment. Clinton, in addition to helping out as the flower shop driver is the one with PTSD, and he's started up a non-profit to help other vets with PTSD. He's also in possession of baby Zoe, since her birth mother, who also has PTSD, is in a rehab program and unable to care for Zoe herself. Taryn, whose biological clock is loudly ticking falls in love with Zoe, and there's definitely an attraction brewing between her and Clinton.
As the summer progresses, these three very different women, raised mostly by Nana Irene, are now forced to live together by circumstance, and begin to slowly bond over their shared love of their grandmother and over their own slowly-revealed trigger issues in a way that's sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes funny, and also enlightening, as is the way they've chosen to deal with those issues, as well as the way they try to help each other get past them.
While I found this novel to be a little too preachy for me, and rather slow-moving, I did like the use of multiple character narration, since it provided insight into each character's issues and the way they each dealt with them, each other, and the other town residents/customers they had to deal with. Once Taryn, Anna Rose and Jorja graduated high school they all headed in different directions, coming back to see Nana Irene only for brief visits over the years--something all 3 women come to regret by the novel's end, and while I wasn't wild for all the characters in this novel, I did enjoy how they matured and how they managed to help each other and form lasting bonds.
If you enjoy faith-based Christian fiction, and can get past the aforementioned triggers, I think you'll enjoy this novel, its characters, its plot, and Carolyn Brown's storytelling ability.
I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions stated are my own.
There was a bit of unevenness in Carolyn Brown's 'The Lucky Shamrock' for me, but all in all I enjoyed the topics and growth of three cousins working in their grandmother's flower shop in Shamrock, Texas. Some of the dialogue and subjects were both serious and hilarious in the ways with which they were dealt. I hope there is more to come with the cousins in the future.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
This was such a good story. 3 cousins came to help out their aunt when her friend and partner at the Lucky Shamrock (a flower shop) had hip replacement. Taryn was the last to arrive and immediately said 'No, No, No". the 3 cousins did not get along., One was very religious, one was a partier and she was the peacemaker and was tired of it. The fighting started pretty quickly but then they started bonding. There was a contest in town to see who could snag in marriage the Aunt's helper Clinton. Taryn and Clinton had sparks right away, but didn't act on them. Each of the young women had been away for 10 years and had not been back often. They had each been betrayed by a man and had dealt with it in different ways. In was amazing to see the squabbling cousins work together to overcome their differences and they stuck up for each other with catty women in town. Clinton was a retired vet who helped other vets recover from PTSD and other issues. He was a good guy and the girls had fun protecting him from the ladies in town. The end of the book was so sweet. An old man who they didn't know well, knew they were all going through different things and on his death tried to repair some of it. So sweet.
I got this book from NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review
The Lucky Shamrock by Carolyn Brown A touching story about three cousins, each with their own flaws and disappointments, who come together over the summer to assist their Nana Irene in running her small town flower shop. They begin to grow and recover their friendships in a delightful way as the summer progressed.
Thank you to the author, Montlake, and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview the book.
This book kept me reading. I would recommend this book to my friends in their reading club as a book for them to read.
This is another awesome book by Carolyn Brown. Once you start reading you won't want to put it down.
Three cousins who fight all the time, have come home to help run the Lucky Shamrock flower shop while their Nana Irene is taking care of her best friend, Ruby, who is also Nana's neighbor. The girls are not supposed to call Irene or Ruby or come visit. She is trying to get them to stop all their fighting and be there for each other.
Loved the characters and the story line and kinda was a little sad when the book ended. As with any story written by Carolyn Brown, you will laugh in parts and be a little sad in other parts. But the story line and characters never disappoint.
Taryn, Jorja & Anna Rose agree to go home for the summer to run their grandmother’s flower shop in Shamrock, Texas while her grandmother nurses her business partner back to health after hip surgery. The girls are happy to help their grandmother but not happy spending the summer with each other. Each girl has their own story and everyone knows everyone in Shamrock and what they don’t know they will create. As hidden secrets are revealed the girls grow closer and have a deeper understanding of the importance of family.
Carolyn Brown has a wonderful way of weaving a story, adding in troubling topics and showing rays of hope at the end. A great summer read that will leave you wanting to go to the flower shop or bake a cinnamon cake.
Thank you to NetGalley, Carolyn Brown and Montlake for the ARC.
A delightful tale of family, the bickering and the love
Three cousins return to their hometown to aid their nana at her floral shop, and rediscover their connections. Warm, funny and heartwarming, Ms. Brown's tale of a small town summer, and echoes of years past is a winner. Darkness in the past of all three girls wears on their souls, until the secrets come out and they help each other heal. Her characters have different personalities but they mostly have character and a strong Christian belief. The few slimy characters get their comeuppance spectacularly, and the girls find their own worth and the loves of their lives. I highly recommend and already plan to gift it to three women I know will love it.
I received a NetGalley ARC gratis and offer my honest opinion free.
The Lucky Shamrock by Carolyn Brown first i want to give a big thank you to Carolyn, Montlake and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book!
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This was such a cute story based in the town of Shamrock, TX i really loved the characters Taryn, Anna Rose, and Jorja as well as Clinton it was a realky great read and i cant wait to read more by this author!