I just finished the fourth book in Barbara Freethy’s Angel’s Bay series.  I read all four straight and thoroughly enjoyed them.

The stories are entertaining and the characters are engaging, but one of the things that I find fun about series like these is the location.  Barbara Freethy is from my former neck of the woods on California’s Central Coast.  The scenery she describes is familiar and I had fun trying to figure out if she was basing the town on Carmel by the Sea, or something further south along Big Sur.  (There is no real town in Big Sur…just a long stretch of amazing coastline that often falls into the ocean.)

The neat thing about reading is what we, as readers, bring to the page. It’s fun to have a sense of familiarity in a book, whether its a familiar milieu, like the theater, or a family situation (five older brothers), or a location.  Or it can be an experience.  I know that I can read the same book years apart and come away with a different experience, because I’ve had additional experiences in my own life that change the way I look at things.

How about you? What do you bring to the pages?

Check out the Angel’s Bay series…you’ll enjoy the read!