Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

Paige's Turn is a new adult contemporary romance written by Jennifer Peel. Being eighteen years old was supposed to be the beginning of new and exciting things, even if you were a skinny kid with lank blond hair, what people would call a late bloomer. Paige felt good about her relationship with her long-term best friend and boyfriend, Jansen McClain, who had started at the University of Florida the year before. While she had an offer of a scholarship at Whitman, an elite liberal arts college in Washington State, she had planned on joining Jansen and going to UF as well. But then, her expectations for the summer before that first year in college, one she planned on spending with Jansen, as they had done almost every summer before that, were abruptly shattered when Jansen broke up with her. Her childhood sweetheart had fallen in love with another girl, leaving her feeling rejected and shattered. She lay on the floor of the treehouse her grandad had built for her brother, Blaine, but which she had claimed as her own, and cried at the unfairness of it all. When she heard the riding lawn mower approaching, she quickly dried her eyes and moved into a darker corner of the treehouse. It would be Sam Kennedy, who had always been kind to her. He was way out of her league, but she had always had a crush on him. And, somehow, he knew exactly what to say as she stood there with the ruins of her expectations lying around her.

Jennifer Peel's new adult contemporary romance novel, Paige's Turn, is fresh and appealing. Paige has never been part of the social set at any stage in her life, but her life in Washington State was infinitely more suited to her soul than life in Bella Port, Florida had been. Granted, she missed the beach and the warm Gulf waters, but she never anticipated going back there to live. Can she get through the year her deceased Aunt Mitzi made as her final request? Paige is returning home, after years of making ends meet as an editor, as an heiress to Aunt Mitzi's millions, the new owner of her aunt's bookstore, Paige's Turn, and the occupant of the beachfront family mansion. Fairy tales have dark edges, however; a dysfunctional family whose envy has erupted into a tangled web of scandalous lies spread throughout the small town is the least of it. Sam now seems to despise her, which was the last thing she expected, and, oddly enough, it hurts the most.

Paige is a marvelous main character in this bright and quirky new adult romance. I instantly felt at ease with her bookish nature and loved her treehouse. I also felt a kinship with her in dealing with the dysfunctional family she thought she had left behind forever. Peel's plot proves that grand coming of age novels are not merely the stuff of young adult genre selections. Watching as Paige discovers herself and her happiness as a late-twenty-something is a joy and an inspiration. Her late Aunt Mitzi, who we get to know through Paige's reminiscences and the letters she left in all manner of places for Paige to find, is a most remarkable character as well. Paige's Turn is most highly recommended.