Second in the Sunrise Cove series, THE BACKUP PLAN by Jill Shalvis explores old relationships and dark secrets of the heart. When Alice inherits a B&B from her childhood, she is stunned to learned that she must help run it with two strangers.

Now these two aren’t completely unknown to her, but it’s been years since she has had contact with the woman who was once her ex best friend and the man who broke her heart. Now they must learn how to get along and pull off a miracle.

There’s no doubt that Jill Shalvis has mastered the art of creating unique conflicts for her characters to endure and work through. I am always really impressed by her ability to come up with something different with each book. However, sometimes I do miss her old way of writing that was more Romance than Women’s Fiction.

While I love the additional storylines of friendship and romance running parallel in these books, sometimes I think the focus can get skewed when there’s so much going on. That being said, I do miss the old style of writing Shalvis had. But that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy this book.

There’s still the same charm and humor that is evident in all Shalvis books. The settings are also fun and interactive and the situations that she puts her characters in never fail to entertain me. So all in all, it was still enjoyable.

Back to Sunrise Cove I go for the 3rd book in the series. I love this series and Jill Shalvis can always be depended on for warmth, humor, a little steam and a lot of love.

Alice, Lauren and Knox are unhappily reunited when they inherit 1/3 each if an old B&B once owned by a cranky woman who meant something to each of them. With plenty of shared history between them, deciding to ban together to fix up the old inn for reopening is a tough task. Each one of them is running from something. For Alice, it's the ghost of her dead brother and the guilt she has over his death. For Knox, it's his tough upbringing and the first girl who broke his heart. For Lauren, it's the death of her first love and being known as the town widow. Together, they find family and friendship.

Loved each of the characters and the setting of this book as well as the tone. The sarcastic quips and barbs had me laughing along and falling in love with their relationships along the way.

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for the ARC.

It’s comforting to read stories from an author you can rely on for an interesting plot and believable characters. This latest book is dripping with sarcasm, wit, barbed comebacks, broken people, old wounds, former acquaintances and new possibilities. It is part of a series yet easy to read on it’s own.
It’s set in the Lake Tahoe area at a defunct Wild West Inn. The deceased former owner was a hardened woman who held a lifetime grudge. She never overcame betrayal or learned how to show love and affection. Her final wishes are meted out in the form of letters to three important people in her life. She also left equal ownership of the Inn to them.
Lauren is the only one of the three still living in the area and is a librarian. Even though It was her grandmother’s Inn, she never knew her. Complicated family wounds deprived her the truth and history. Alice has left her thriving construction business, driving in from Arizona, all to settle this unexpected inheritance quickly so she can leave. Her fond memories are tainted by guilt over her brother’s death. Then there’s ruggedly handsome Knox who has a successful company in Seattle, heavily invested in sustainability and green eco-friendly housing.
Each of them has distinct personalities with a fair amount of distrust. They must decide whether to keep or sell the Inn, of course they don’t agree. The process of discovering who their benefactor really was will make or break their precarious relationships. Subtle romance hides just beneath the surface for someone. The journey with them as they learn to face the past head on is full of emotion, life lessons and hope. The story was a great opportunity to be Introspective and put life’s obstacles in perspective.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley for the digital advance reader copy of “The Backup Plan” by Jill Shavis The Sunrise Cove Series 3, and to Harper Collins Publishers. These are all my own honest personal thoughts and opinions given voluntarily without compensation.

This one grabs your heart and never lets go. Knox, Alice and Lauren all come together at an Inn they each inherit and decide to take a month to fix it up before selling. Alice and Lauren were childhood friends until the loss of Alice's brother drives them apart. Alice always had a thing for Knox when she was younger and she finds that not much has changed in the years since she last saw him. As they all come together as adults, each needs to work through past hurts and losses to decide if and how their futures will intertwine.

Jill Shalvis always brings the best parts of humanity to her books. There are messy friendships that are also loyal and solid. There is romance based on more where two people figure out how to come together without losing themselves. There are characters learning how to overcome emotional loss and vulnerability to grow into stronger, more capable versions of themselves. And, of course, there is found family...the kind of family that is loving and fun and chaotic and heartwarming. This book, as with all her others, feels like a warm hug on the most difficult of days. There is easy banter and a wit to her writing that just flows flawlessly. I finished the book and, when trying to decide what to read next, looked back at it and realized I just wanted to return to these characters again to see how they're doing.

If you are looking for a book full of friendship and romance you will love this one. I would recommend this highly to anyone, but especially fans of Sarah Morgan and Kristan Higgins.

When I picked up my advance copy of The Backup Plan, I was looking for a feel good read and Ms Shalvis did not disappoint.

We meet Alice, Knox, and Lauren when they jointly inherit a semi run down inn from Eleanor. Each of them has a their own history/relationship with both the property and Eleanor. Alice and Lauren have their own complicated back story.

I appreciated the way Ms Shalvis used Eleanor and her emails along with the work around the inn to peel back some of the layers encouraging all three characters to develop. Old wounds were poked, insecurities revealed, and relationships grew in the month that they were “forced” together.

We see each character face a hard thing and come out the other side as a better person. I enjoyed how the three partners supported each other and communicated so that they seemed to inherently know who the struggling person needed to talk to. The personal growth led to new friendships and romantic developments.

Add in Ms Shalvis’ classic humor and this is a well written must read set in the Tahoe area town is Sunset Cove. This is the third book in this series, but is a complete standalone.

I received an arc from NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

Alice, Lauren and Knox are brought together again after Eleanor’s passing. Eleanor was a woman who made mistakes but had a second chance with these three when they were kids.

As Alice and the gang are forced to work together to bring Eleanor’s Inn back to life they find out lots of things about each other and that they are better together as a family than apart.

Alice and Knox are attracted to one another and Lauren finds a new friend that turns into something more.

These three together will make you laugh and cry with their antics and self realizations. Great read. 4.5 stars

Three friends come back together after the death of a person important to all of them. They inherit a hotel that was once featured in a television show. The hotel needs a lot of refurbishing before it can be sold. They are able to mend their broken relationships and find love and a renewed friendship.

Knox had a difficult childhood and feels responsible for not saving his mother, who was an alcoholic. He was mentored by Elanor, who gave him a focus, and being able to fix everything around a house allowing him to eventually open his own business building Eco-friendly homes and being successful. Knox is a man who loves wholeheartedly and knows what he wants. He quickly realizes that what he wants is Alice.

Alice ran after her whole life fell apart. Her brother enjoyed racing cars and living life in the fast lane. Alice looked up to her older brother, who helped shape her into who she is. She loves working on cars but gave that up when her brother died and her father lost their home in a lawsuit. Her father disappeared from her life afterwards to work in Europe on the racing circuit.

Alice has closed herself off from feeling emotions and doesn't get involved in relationships. However, when her and Knox see each other again, after years apart, it is like they draw all the electricity in the room to them. The electricity is so strong, you almost expect to start seeing fireworks start shooting off from the static flow. These two understand each other like no one else, they understand why the other feels the way that they do. I could not imagine a better couple than these two.

Lauren lost everyone she cared about in a very short time. She lost her boyfriend, her best friend, and her family. Now after her great-aunt died and left the three of them 1/3 each of her estate with very specific instructions, does she realize what she has needed. She needs that sense of belonging, family, and something to guide her by finding what she loves. As the three of them work together on bringing the estate up to code, they all grow closer and her and Alice figure out what they are missing out on. Lauren also finds love in the one place she never expects.

I loved this book. I swear each book in this series just gets better and better. All three of these characters warm your heart and they help you to see you really can have a second chance and you can find love in places you never saw. You can have a closed heart but that one special person can open you up and help you face your past. I loved The Backup Plan and highly highly recommend it. You just may want to clear your schedule and have some tissues near by because once you dive in you can't climb out of this story and it makes you feel all the feels.

This is a book of 3 people brought back together. Alice & Lauren had been best friends, but when Will, Alice's brother, was killed the friendship was broken. Alice had a crush on Knox when she was younger so to be a co owner of the Inn when they both worked as teenagers, is requiring her to do some soul searching. This book was slow in some places, but over all a good read. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy

This was an enjoyable read. While all the characters had trauma, it was lighthearted and they approached everything with kindness and understanding. It would have been cool to hear more about the background of the tv show but it seemed something like dukes of hazzard

When Alice, Lauren and Knox inherent a dilapidated Wild West B&B they don’t realize that they are to work together to bring it back to its original condition. Their lives are connected from their younger days and the relationship they had with the owner. Alice, Lauren and Knox are dealing with their own history and secrets from the past. Stuck together they set up rules so they can work together. As they work together they get insight into their own lives and rebuild the relationships they had with each other.
Great read as all her books!



Thanks to Jill Shalvis and Avon and Harper Voyager!

The Backup Plan is the story of 3 friends who lost touch for various reasons. When the owner of the B&B leaves it to the 3 of them after she passes away it brings them back together, along with their hard feelings, their love for each other, and forces them to deal with their pasts.



I really enjoyed learning about Alice, Lauren, and Knox’s histories. While they all intertwine, some more than others, they each have their own thing going on. They each have their own reason for why the B&B was left to them. From the synopsis, I knew that none of them would leave town before the B&B was renovated, but I wondered about how much pain it would cause them and how it they would heal.



The pasts collide, the present helps them heal, and all three characters find a future that gives them their own HEA. Jill Shalvis is a must-read author for me and I cannot wait for more of the Sunrise Cove series.

Can we get a book about Lauren and Ben because they are adorable!
Shalvis always creates a beautiful world I just want to jump into and experience, this book is no different.

I always love Jill Shalvis. She manages to keep the perfect amount of swoony love seasons with an interesting plot!

I wasn't sure I would be able to read this book. I started and stopped 3 times. But I persevered and I am so glad I did. Alice, Knox and Lauren made a wonderful trio. Alot of soul searching with a lot of humor and finally romance. Read this book!

One of the best books this year! It has real struggles and shows how friends can really help you cope with the past. Sometimes the past is not as it seems. Wish I could give it 10 stars.

When Eleanor passes away she leaves her Inn in Sunrise Cove to her three favorite people, Alice, Lauren and Knox. Each of them have affected her life in some way. When they all come together to fix up The Old Wild West Last Chance Inn to prepare for visitors, once again their time together brings up old memories good and bad. They all discover facts about each other they never knew.

This was book three in the Sunrise Cove series, I didn't read the first two, but I plan on it. I really liked THE BACKUP PLAN. Jill Shalvis is a great story teller!! I loved the emails written at the beginning of the chapters by Eleanor and how each character grew by the end of the story. Of course there was some romance added in to make it a perfect read. I highly recommend adding this to your reading list.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Avon and Harper Voyager for my ARC in exchange for my honest review

This review will be posted on my Instagram (@coffee.break.book.reviews) in the near future.

What do you do, when your mistakes messed up peoples lives and you want to make amends, why you gift those people an Inn and give them clues that showed them what actually happened and allow them to heal. Alice, Knox and Lauren have been running from their past, thinking it was some flaw in them that created their sadness, but while renovating an Inn gifted to them by Eleanor Graham, they find secrets and letters that talk about those faithful days that made them run from the past. Each letter they read together helps them face those nightmares and allow them to heal and in the process become closer to each other. The letters also allowed them to understand that everyone has flaws and that there's always another point of view, and that it's ok to open up to one another and forgive. When you face the monster, it usually goes away.

I found I liked Knox the best since he was more down to earth character and of course he had a dog. I liked that he tried to help Alice and Lauren with the question they were to scared to face and he was there when they were vulnerable. I also like as the monsters were revealed to them that there was someone there to help each character face the monster and help them move on or not be so afraid of the past. I love the list that was suppose to give them directions on what to do next in the Inn and in the end it kept changing as the relationships changed and questions were answered, I found it funny.

Finally, I like that this is a very grownup story about life and not just happily ever after story which gets all gushy.

I want to thank Avon and Harper Voyager, Avon and NetGalley for an advance copy of this story.

This was a cute story about three people coming together to heal from shared trauma. Throw in a crazy dog named Pickles and a cranky old lady meddling beyond the grave and you’ve got The Backup Plan. The cover and the synopsis made it sound like a romance, but it was more family drama to me.

I enjoyed the two female characters, Lauren and Alice. They were written honestly with flaws and all and I found them very interesting and believable. The male character, Knox, on the other hand seemed eye-rollingly too good to be true: handsome, do-gooder, manly yet sensitive, construction worker, but wait, he owns the company. Oh, and he’s rich (of course). It would have felt more balanced if he’d had a few screws loose as well or if we could’ve been rid of him altogether and just focused on the mending of the relationship between Lauren and Alice.

Thank you to Avon and Harper Voyager and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

When Knox, Alice and Lauren inherit the rundown Wild West Inn they are left with no choice but to work together. That wouldn't be so bad if Alice and Lauren weren't ex best friends and Knox wasn't the crush that Alice had all through high school. But with loads of laughs and a few poignant moments the three end up in a better place than when they started. But what will happen to the friendship and the romance when the Inn is complete? Will they walk away or have they found a new future ahead of them? This is a book that is all about change. Changing your mindset, changing your interpretations and changing your outcome. There is nothing better than surrounding yourself with those who not only love you but understand and appreciate you as well.