Review: The Burnt Toast B&B (Bluewater Bay #5) by Heidi Belleau & Rachel Haimowitz

First, the elephant in the room. One of the heroes of this tale is a transgender (female-to-male) character. I’m actually glad that this is not hinted at in the back-cover blurb, and that I found it out naturally (very early on in the book). It put a different slant on the relationship, but only by a couple degrees. A transgender guy is still a guy, and Ginsberg was one fun dude. Derrick was also endearing in his own crotchety way, and seeing them both fall in love with each other (and the B&B) was a total delight. 

I especially like that the majority of the internal and external conflict of this book did not revolve around Ginsberg being transgender. That’s been done before, and while Derrick had his share of hangups, I’m glad he mostly rolled with the transgender issue. To this point, the Bluewater Bay series has been fun with a dash of angst, and overloading this book with drama would have felt out of the pattern.

As a secondary character, Jim fell into way too many stereotypes for me to enjoy him much. I won’t be sad if he never pops up as a background character in the next Bluewater Bay books.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) stars. Cross-posted to Amazon and Goodreads.