{"id":3947,"date":"2025-08-30T03:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3947"},"modified":"2025-08-30T03:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:59:13","slug":"review-like-driftwood-on-the-salish-sea-by-richard-l-levine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3947","title":{"rendered":"Review: Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea by Richard L. Levine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Synopsis:<\/strong><\/p>\n

When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who\u2019d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San Juan Island, Washington, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and whom Mitch had thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.<\/p>\n

She was his salvation from a strict upbringing. He was her knight in shining armor who had always looked out for her. Through the many years of porch-swinging, cotton-candied summer nights, autumn harvest festivals, and hand-in-hand walks planning for the ideal life together, they were inseparable\u2026until 9\/11, when the real world interrupted their Rockwell-esque small town life, and Mitch had joined the Marine Corps.<\/p>\n

This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he\u2019d ever made. It\u2019s the story of a woman who, with strength and determination, rose up from the ashes of a shattered dream; but who never gave up hope that her one true love would return to her. As she once told an old friend: \u201cEven before we met all those years ago, we were destined to be together in this life, and we will be together again, because even today we\u2019re connected in a way that\u2019s very special, and he needs to know about it before one of us leaves this earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Favorite Lines:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo him, those shadows resembled a life slipping away\u2014a life he felt no more able to grasp and hold on to no more than he could grab and hold on to any one of those shadows\u2014and it abruptly reminded him of one of the last times he saw Alex.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hoping if I tell that lie often enough, there\u2019s a chance it could come true.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHaven\u2019t you ever been involved with someone so special that you couldn\u2019t concentrate on anything, or you couldn\u2019t catch your breath no matter how hard you\u2019ve tried? Wasn\u2019t there ever someone who made you feel that you wanted to spend your every waking moment with because maybe, just maybe, there wouldn\u2019t be a tomorrow? That\u2019s what it feels like to me when I\u2019m with her. Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking that time really is running out. Apart from that, when we\u2019re not together I feel lost, like I have no direction, no purpose for being. I feel like\u2026as I once told Jess, like a sailboat that has no rudder or keel\u2026completely at the mercy of the wind and the current.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I received a copy of this book from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.<\/p>\n

Richard I. Levine\u2019s Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea<\/em> is a quiet novel about coming home, but it\u2019s also about what you carry with you when home isn\u2019t the same place you left. Mitch Brody, a Marine pushed into medical retirement, returns to the San Juan Islands with more questions than answers. He wants to disappear into familiar places\u2014the ferry crossings, the smell of salt air, the memory of an orchard long gone\u2014but the past has other plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What I loved about this book is how ordinary moments are weighted with history. A doctor\u2019s waiting room, a cup of coffee in a ferry galley, a drive down a rural road\u2014Levine makes them feel alive with tension, because Mitch isn\u2019t just moving through space, he\u2019s moving through memory. Ghosts linger here, and not just Alex, the friend whose absence still cuts at him. There\u2019s Jess, the woman he left behind, and the version of himself he can\u2019t quite reconcile.<\/p>\n

The writing is unhurried, like the islands themselves. There\u2019s room for silence, for reflection, for scenes to stretch out the way real conversations do. By the end, I found myself rereading the opening lines about ashes on the water, realizing how much weight they\u2019d gathered along the way.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a book that hurries to a resolution. It\u2019s a book that asks you to sit with Mitch while he figures out whether forgiveness\u2014his own and others\u2019\u2014is still possible. In the end, like driftwood, he\u2019s shaped by the tides that brought him here, but still moving with them.<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Overall, Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea<\/em> is a thoughtful, unhurried story about coming home and facing the past you can\u2019t outrun. Richard I. Levine gives us a main character shaped by war, haunted by loss, and pulled back to the San Juan Islands to reckon with love, regret, and responsibility. It\u2019s a novel about memory and forgiveness, written with the patience of the place it inhabits. For readers who appreciate reflective, character-driven fiction rooted in a strong sense of setting, this one lingers like salt air long after you\u2019ve finished the last page. Be ready to cry and happy reading!<\/p>\n

You can find the book trailer here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Check out\u00a0Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea <\/em>here!<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis: When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who\u2019d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}