The Cove

New Adult Clean Contemporary Novel

By: Julie L. Spencer

Narrated by: Chrissa Boice

Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Some accomplishments are easier than others....

For Olympic swimmer Gail Pederson, gold medals came easy. Finding true love and marrying him in the temple? Not so easy. Especially with three men competing for her attention and temptations leading her further and further from her goal.

Choices have consequences, and each choice Gail makes affects all four of them. One choice changes their lives forever and leaves unexpected consequences in its wake.

Innocence lost, promises broken, and friendships destroyed. Gail may choose how to live her life, but she can’t choose the consequences.

©2014 Julie L. Spencer (P)2018 Julie L. Spencer

enjoyable clean romantic story

An enjoyable emotional young romance story. This engaging storyline had me interested page after page as the characters get caught up with their mistakes through a small amount of drama and alot of depth.  This sweet romantic story had well developed interesting characters. A truly good clean romance with vivid descriptions that was beautifully narrated and a great suprising twist for the ending. 

A Story of Redemption

I almost didn't finish listening to this. I remembered I had read it previously and I knew that there were some struggles coming up. Gail was very immature, but I can see how the story could be realistic, too. I am glad I finished it. it was an emotional story but still had a happy ending after the struggles.

Was surprised

Enjoyable but not predictable. Clean romance novel. Has some Latter Day Saint (Mormon) church teachings in it.

A surprising tale

This book surprised me. Gail has three people who think they love her and want to marry her. She makes some very poor choices. The surprising part is that Gail dies. Now we have three men who are mourning her loss along with her parents. I was a little shocked. I couldn’t understand what else was coming in the book. Of course I have given enough spoilers. You will have to read or listen to the book to figure it out.
There were some good themes such as learning to forgive yourself and learning to forgive others.
The narrator did a fabulous job.

The Cove is such a special story!

I may be a little biased, but I just love this story. Gail is a selfish, spoiled brat who destroys the lives of the three men who love her. You may need a few tissues along this journey.

story about real life

I liked the narrator for this book. The story was clean and had some twists which made it interesting. There was a part in the middle that made me wonder if this was going to have the happy ending I wanted, but it got around to it in the end. Cute story.

Good Plot & Narration

A good story for a young girl Gail who has an Olympic goal, she is also newly engaged, writing to a best friend on a mission with the LDS church. Her life is as a young woman trying to become an adult, choices are molding her life, as they sometimes affect others.
Readers can probably relate to them. She has wealthy parents, she seems to be in her own world, without thoughts of others, a confusing time in her life. A good plot and narration of one becoming an adult. Given audio for my voluntary review

Not my favorite

I'm a fan of Julie L. Spencer's writing, and had hoped to enjoy this one more. However, I had a few issues with this particular story.

I honestly disliked Gail, the lead female character. She was a coward, plain and simple. And her cowardice plays out repeatedly throughout the story, impacting the lives of those who love her. She thinks she's doing the right thing by waiting to let people down gently, but knows much sooner in the story that two of the three guys are not for her. And I'm not certain the third one really was for her either, but they took things too far.

When she and her chosen guy do finally get together, I felt sorry for him. She had put him through so much. I really don't have much hope that the future will be better for them.

As a side note, this story is told in the context of a specific faith tradition but presumes a familiarity with that tradition that this particular reader didn't have. So more clarification for the uninitiated would have been appropriate as well.

The Cove

Aren't swimmers taught it is dangerous to swim alone? Yep that is what I thought. But Gail is an Olympian. A gold medal swimmer. She swims the cove to see Todd but she has two others who love her. Each choice she makes the deeper in she gets. How does she fix this or can she? I enjoyed this light clean reading novel. It has a few surprises along the way but it was nice to read something that had no swearing just intellegent people in arguments or just talking to one another. The narrator , Chrissa Boice did a nice job telling this story. I enjoyed listening to her.


This book
was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

You better have a box of tissues close by.

This book was a wonderful read. As a mother myself, I wanted to stop them from the heart break I could see coming. But the twists and turns weren’t what I expected. Great read for a Saturday morning.