Chesapeake Weddings by Cecelia Dowdy is another book in the “Romancing America” series set in Maryland. The first of three stories in the book is “John’s Quest”; when Monica’s sister leaves her blind son on her doorstep in Ocean City Monica is at a loss for what to do. She hires John to tutor her nephew in school and there is a mutual attraction, but she will not date him because of his agnostic beliefs.
In “Milk Money”, after her father’s death Emily has been trying to run the family dairy farm in Monkton alone. She does not like it when her stepmother hires Frank an accountant to audit the books, especially when he uncovers some troubling details about her father’s past.
When Karen’s fiancé was exposed as an embezzler she was left alone with “Bittersweet Memories.” She moves back home to Annapolis and meets her mother’s next door neighbor Keith who seems to know too much about her family’s business.
I like this book a lot! I have visited all of the settings of in this book, and each story seems to give an accurate picture of different parts of the state. I was a little disappointed that none of the stories directly involved the Chesapeake Bay since the book is called “Chesapeake Weddings” but this was a fairly minor detail for me.
I liked how all three stories are connected to each other. Karen is a minor character in the first story, and Monica and Emily are cousins. I did not like that there was a story in between the two where Karen appears, when I got to the third story I had to stop and think “Who is she again?”
Moving on after a previous relationship is a theme in all three stories. Both Monica and Karen had a bad break up and have trouble moving on with their lives, while Frank’s wife was tragically killed and to get over his pain he began drinking. The importance of not marrying an unbeliever is an important theme in the first two stories. Neither John nor Frank are saved at the beginning of their stories and both Monica and Emily refuse to date them because of this.
On the whole, this is a very interesting book. I give it four and a half out of five stars.
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Soli Deo Gloria!
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