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Readers corner: Local islands the setting for romance

Vanessa Mateland of Saanich has published Galiano Gamble and Cortes Connection, part of her Island Love series
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Galiano Gamble is from Vanessa Mateland's Island Love series of novels.

Vanessa Mateland has lived in Saanich for many years. With her husband she has spent many summers in sailboats cruising the Southern Gulf islands and Desolation Sound. Mateland has recently published two romance novels in the Island Love series.

This year she published Galiano Gamble and last year Cortes Connection. The setting for both books is beautiful Vancouver Island and the nearby islands of Galiano and Cortes. Both books highlight the plight of young professional women absorbed by their careers and facing their biological clocks as they search for a mate, the father of their children.

Galiano Gamble

Beautiful and brilliant, 34-year-old Dr. Joanne Jane Tomkins, JJ to her friends, wakes one sunny June morning longing for a loving relationship and a child. Later that day, still in her heightened sense of awareness, she inadvertently collides with Shawn Stevenson, who is her newly hired office nurse. Her radar begins to vibrate and her hormones start to dance like June bugs on a hot summer night, forcing her to gamble her all.

Passion and desire war with the everyday realities of very different life styles: Can an urbanite female and a rural-loving man find a common ground? Will JJ’s wealth, and status as a physician, intimidate Shawn? Can these two powerful people develop their searing sexual attraction into a committed workable relationship?

Cortes Connection

To escape her high-pressure professional job as a physician, Juliet Armstrong books a kayak holiday in the pristine waters of Desolation Sound in British Columbia. Her friend Marigold urges her to find a delicious man on the holiday. Juli claims she is not interested; however, when injuries disable the other kayakers she finds herself abandoned with Rich Thompson, doctor for Cortes Island and alternate guide. Thus begins their tumultuous, sexually charged relationship.

Their trip is filled with exquisite beauty and exciting, even life-threatening, events that force them together. On a remote island accessible through a reversing tidal waterfall, sleeping under the stars and a meteor shower, Juli relaxes in the calm beauty. Later that same night, frightened by the howls of wolves, she impulsively leaps into Rich’s sleeping bag, finding a beauty and danger of another kind.

Both books are available through Amazon.com, Kindle or vanessamateland@gmail.com