The Pier at Jasmine Lake

Missing Pieces

By: Danielle Stewart

Narrated by: Janelle Tedesco

Mark Ruiz’s life is a structured routine full of well-worn grooves. Board meetings. Dinner with clients. Preparing presentations. Exhaustingly long days strung together over 41 years of hard work. Retirement is the promise he makes to himself. The item on his list he can’t wait to check off. The problem? Retirement is better in theory than in practice.

Three months in, he realizes his new phase of life is as stale as the slice of cake they sent him home with on his last day at the office. His newly purchased cabin on Jasmine Lake is supposed to be an oasis of relaxation. The place and time in his life he’s longed for.

Rocking on the back porch overlooking the lake, he doesn’t find peace. Instead, he finds a pervasive kind of boredom he can’t seem to shake.Just as he resigns himself to retirement, Mark receives a letter that could change everything. A glimpse at the life he could have had. But like most things involving family, it’s complicated. Dangerously so. Gwen is faced with the yet another dilemma when finding her father means taking on his struggles. With Griff by her side, she will have to decide if not knowing is better than the burdens of discovering the truth.

©2019 Danielle Stewart (P)2021 Danielle Stewart

Good sequel

It's been a while since I listened to the first volume in this series, so it took me a moment to remember who was who, and what had happened; but once I did, I really enjoyed this sequel.
Gwen had found her birth mother and half siblings in the first volume, and now she sets out to find her biological father.
Her friend Griff is with her on this journey, and Gwen finds more than she has bargained for.

As always, Janelle Tedesco delivers a perfect narration. I have to admit that I mainly listened to this book because she narrates it. I absolutely love her way of narrating, of bringing all the characters to life without ever being overbearing.
Given a choice, I usually prefer a British accent, but Ms Tedesco is such a gifted narrator, that I listen to practically every book I know of that she narrates.
The story is good, but imo it is even better as an audio book, than just the written word.

So good!

I'm really enjoying this family drama, so far, but I'm really glad it isn't happening in my family. While book one was about meeting her bio-mom, book two was about meeting her bio-dad, who didn't know she existed. I actually finished this book while I was at work, and am so enamored with the people, I started READING book three. I'm halfway through it already. I can't wait for Tedesco to finish narrating the rest of the books! I hear her voices in my head as I read about familiar characters. Well done by both the author and the narrator!

Captivating

What a great series this is. The characters are so involved that you can’t wait to see what happens next. I look forward to more.

Loved the narration. Some issues with the story.

I listened to book one in this series and loved it tremendously. When I found out about book two, I jumped at the chance to get back into this world. The listen still centers around Gwen trying to track down her bio parents. In book one, it was mom. In book two, it's dad.

Gwen was a great character in book one. Her struggle was real but she stayed strong in her effort to find the truth. In this book, she's a tad hard to take. She's more judgemental than I remember and way to angsty for me to tolerate having her in my ears too long. I swear if she were real, I would have gladly smacked her. POTENTIAL SPOILER AHEAD: How is Gwen going to get upset at someone who obviously had a bad day, was in pain, and responded negatively because of a misunderstanding, but gladly forgive and spend time with another who - on purpose and without shame - walked out on his wife and four kids??!! I nearly stopped listening then.

The really bright spot in this listen is the narration. This is a duo POV story and Tedesco does an excellent job telling both sides of the story. There seems to be a book three on the horizon and I'm all in for that one. I want to see the Gwen from book one return and as this book ends, things seem to set up rather nicely for that to happen.

The Pier at Jasmine Lake

I am not surprised I enjoyed this book almost as much as book one. Gwen is on the hunt for her biological parents, book 1 she found her birth mother that was a very inspiring book. Now Gwen wants to meet her birth father. Mark Ruiz is her birth father and to say their meet isn’t the easiest. I don’t blame Mark at all he didn’t know and once he did we really got to see how much knowing affected him.

Gwen comes into Mark’s life at just the right time for him to make amends with his own father as well. It’s an interesting book and I enjoyed it.
Griff and Gwen and her ex thing that I didn’t really enjoy, it was like make the choice or don’t. That dragged a little for me. I liked their choice; there is never a right time.

The zoom meeting with Leslie and Mark I thought was a great addition to this book it really shows all sides of the story.
I am interested to see what the next book is going to be like. Seems Gwen’s sister is going to be stirring things up.

I really enjoyed the narration for this book, I like that Janelle gives each character their own voice without over doing it. I mean how she can have that many voices!?! Blows my mind.