Silver Thaw

Originally Published: 03-06-2018

Silver Thaw is the 1st book in Catherine Anderson’s new Mystic Creek Series. This series starts out about the Sterling family.

Book 1 is about the oldest, Jeb.

He’s a self-made carpenter living his life in Mystic Creek. The story starts out in the dead of winter, and it’s cold!!! Hence the title of the story, Silver Thaw.

Book Summary

Like a good neighbor, he helps out his neighbors when a cold front comes in that could be deadly.

As he’s going around helping the old and the infirm, he finds a younger woman with her young child in a broken down hovel. He can’t let her stay as the pipes have broken and they could freeze to death. So he takes them home.

Prior to coming to stay with him, Amanda Banning wrote little thoughts onto notes and let them go into the wind. And they landed on Jeb’s land. So Jeb has and idea of who she is and what she is up against.

He knows that she is on the run from her abusive husband. He not only hurt her but he also severly hurt and abused her young daughter, Chloe. He knows that she is having troubles making ends meet and that she needs the job that she’s been able to find.

He also knows that she loves her daughter very much and needs to get out from under her abusive husband.

So as they get to know each other, they find they are attracted to each other and their romance blossoms. Due to the abuse she endured, Mandy is reluctant to have a sexual relationship with Jeb.

But they do get to know each other quickly as they are thrown together because of the storm, but also because of the danger that she is in.

When Jeb finds the pictures of the injuries that they both sustained at the hands of her husband, he knows that he can’t just sit by. They need to fight back to make sure that Chloe stays safe.

So the majority of the story is them learning about each other while they take steps to protect Chloe. They also take the legal steps needed to protect them both from Mark. So you meet other characters that have to deal with that.

This story is about Jeb and Mandy. But you do meet his whole family as Christmas comes and goes in the storyline. They play a part but not a huge role.

This is a full-length novel with no cliffhangers. The problem of the story was how Mandy was going to deal with her husband. And in the end, he died in a tragic accident.

There is one sex scene to know about, but it is mild in intensity. They do come together a couple of other times, but there are no details for those scenes.

Catherine Anderson does a great job with her storytelling and growth of characters. You can really picture the characters and the place.

She also does a good job of presenting the issues around abuse and what can happen to both Mandy and Chloe. It’s heartbreaking what happened.

I did find the romance between Mandy and Jeb to be cheezy!!! It happened fast, almost love-at-first-sight fast!

I did enjoy the story have am looking forward to the rest of the series!