It's Bleak Outside. Here's Why a Sweet Island Romance is Exactly What You Need Right Now

It's snowing again here in Alberta. And while I am happy for the extra moisture so we aren't living in a season of Bladerunner this Summer, even someone like me who likes winter is starting to feel exhausted from it all.

If you're also reading this from somewhere that's currently experiencing what I can only describe as weather with a personal vendetta — hi, welcome, pull up a blanket.

On days like this, I don't want a book that demands too much from me. I don't want gritty thrillers or weighty literary fiction. I want warmth. I want colour. I want a world where the biggest decision of my morning is whether to swim before or after breakfast, and the sun is doing its job properly.

I want to be somewhere else entirely.

That's what a great island romance does. It doesn't just tell you a love story, it relocates you.

 

The Escapism Isn't Frivolous. It's the Whole Point.

There's sometimes this apologetic energy around reading romance, like it needs to be justified or defended. It doesn't. Choosing a book that makes you feel good is a completely valid use of your reading hours, and frankly, on a day when the world outside looks like a snow globe that someone shook too hard, it might be the best decision you make all day.

Sweet island romance specifically does something particular: it pairs the warmth of a tropical setting with the comfort of a love story you can trust.  Just a group of people, a beautiful place, and the slow, satisfying build of something real. I have to say that especially today I am jealous because my friend is on a beach in Mexico and my book is with her, I am not!

 

What Makes an Island Setting Different

Setting in a romance is doing more work than it sometimes gets credit for. A Caribbean island isn't just a backdrop, it changes everything about how a story moves.

There's no commute to escape to. No popping out to a different city for the weekend. The characters are there, in close quarters, surrounded by ocean on all sides. The setting creates the pressure that makes the romance simmer.

Add in the specific details from my own life experience:  the way the water looks at different times of day, the rhythms of a small island community, the particular kind of belonging that comes from building a life somewhere far from where you started — and the setting stops being decorative. It becomes part of the story's heartbeat.

 

What I look for in a cozy escape read: A setting so vivid you can feel the temperature change. Characters who are genuinely good to each other, not perfect, but kind. A love story that earns its ending slowly. And ideally, some kind of animal situation. Dolphins count. Dolphins definitely count.

Undercurrents of Love: A Caribbean Island in the 1990s

I wrote Undercurrents of Love because I wanted to write the book I wanted to read on a day exactly like this one.

It's set on a Caribbean island in the late 1990s — before smartphones, before social media, before the constant noise of being always reachable. Riley Byrne trains dolphins at an open-ocean facility called "The Lagoon", and the island is everything to her: her work, her found family, her dream. When researcher Dr. Gray Whittal arrives from California, neither of them is planning on anything more than a professional arrangement.

It's slow burn. It's warm. The characters are genuinely good people who are kind to each other, and the found family around them, the team at The Lagoon, is the kind of ensemble that makes you wish you could have dinner with all of them.

There's also some suspense threaded through, because apparently I can't write without giving my characters something to actually worry about. But the heart of it is the island, the dolphins, and two people figuring out whether this thing between them is worth the risk of everything they've already built

 

Perfect for you if: You want warmth without spice. A love story that takes its time. A setting you can disappear into completely. Characters who feel like real adults making real choices. And a world you'll want to visit again in Book 2, Under the Island Sky.

 

Ready to Book Your Mental Holiday?

Undercurrents of Love is available everywhere books are sold — eBook, paperback, and through your library via Overdrive.

Grab it, find the warmest corner of your house, and let the Caribbean do the rest.

— Colleen

P.S. If you end up reading it in one sitting with a hot drink and a blanket, I want to know. Find me on Instagram @colleenbookmaven.