Title: Deep in the Valley
Author: Robyn Carr
Series: Grace Valley Trilogy #1
Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)
My Bookshelves: Contemporary, Contemporary romance
Dates read: 22nd March 2020
Pace: Medium
Format: Novel
Publisher: Mira
Year: 2000
5th sentence, 74th page: She parked behind the last of four law enforcement vehicles, grabbed her bag, jumped out of her truck and went straight to Tom.
WELCOME TO GRACE VALLEY, CALIFORNIA – WHERE BLOOD RUNS THICKER.. .TIES ARE STRONGER… AND LOVE IS ALL THE MORE SWEET
Visitors to the town often remark about the valley’s peace and beauty – both of which are plentiful. Unlocked doors, front porches, pies cooling in the windows – this is country life at its finest. But visitors don’t always see what lies at the heart of a community. Or just beyond…
June Hudson grew up in Grace Valley, the daughter of the town doctor. leaving only to get her medical training, she returned home and followed in her father’s footsteps. Some might say she chose the easy, comfortable route… but June knows better.
For June, her emergency room is wherever she’s needed – or wherever a patient finds her. She is always on call, her work is her life and these people are her extended family. Which is a good thing, since this is a town where you should have picked your husband in the ninth grade. Grace Valley is not exactly the place to meet eligible men – until an undercover DEA agent suddenly starts appearing at all sorts of strange hours.
Everybody has secrets down in the valley. Now June has one of her own.
I read this after reading the first two Virgin River books (Virgin River and Shelter Mountain) and I kind of wish I had have known about the Grace Valley Trilogy first. After all, it talks about characters that you come to love in Virgin River, so you kind of know what June has in store for her future. Which made it a little less exciting. But only the teensiest, tiniest bit.
I’m from a kind of small town in Australia, so the whole eccentrics in the small towns, that slightly different, off-kilter way of viewing life… I totally get it. In fact, I had the same doctor from the time I was born (literally) until I was about fourteen, then his partner until I was twenty-two. Then I moved and whatnot… but that whole country doctor, country practice, staying in the same place with the same people. There’s a beautiful bit of nostalgia attached to that for me. Something that made me keep sinking my nose as far as I could into the pages… literally. Sometimes I couldn’t even read the pages I was getting so excited… and close.
Unlike the Virgin River books, Deep in the Valley focuses solely on June. There is the introduction of a love interest, but it’s not the full-on romance that the follow-on series is. I liked this. I’m already ridiculously attached to June, so I can’t wait to read two more books that solely feature her. And her friends and family is this ridiculously cute and quirky little town. A town that, although it is still that whole “simpler way of life” (which really isn’t, but I digress), is starting to face the changes of modern life. And I look forward to finding out how they cope with this in the next two books.
More than anything in this book, I loved, loved, loved the discussions about women’s rights. From the man beating his wife and children that no one did anything about; to the preacher who is harassing women and being laughed at… there are so many little instances that are ignored by the men throughout this book. So many instances that I’ve seen ignored in my own life. Yet, at the very end, there is a kind of wake up to how things that others think they can’t do anything about have dire consequences, and maybe, just maybe, sometimes you should actually do something to help those in your community.
Earth and Skye 