Virgin River

Wanted: Midwife/nurse practitioner in Virgin River, population six hundred. Make a difference against a backdrop of towering California redwoods and crystal clear rivers. Rent-free cabin included.

When the recently widowed Melinda Monroe sees this ad, she quickly decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache and to reenergize the nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving—the cabin is a dump, the roads are treacherous and the local doctor wants nothing to do with her. Realizing she’s made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning.

But a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch changes her plans…and former marine Jack Sheridan cements them into place.

What you can expect in Virgin River:

• Small Town Romance
• New Beginnings
• Fish-out-of-Water
• Midwife Heroine
• Ex-Marine Hero

• Virgin River by Robyn Carr
• Series: Virgin River #1
• Published: Harlequin Audio on January 5, 2021 (original publication date was March 2007)
• Genre: Romance, contemporary
• Listening length: 12 hours 36 minutes
• Dates listened: 11.25.2025 – 12.2.2025
• Format: Audiobook (Libby)
• Narrator: Thérèse Plummer
• Add on Goodreads
• Purchase on Amazon
• ⭐⭐½
• 🌶🌶🌶

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As a nurse, I’ve had the Netflix show that is based on this book series recommended to me multiple times. If you haven’t learned by now, if there’s a show/movie based on a book, I’m going to check out the book first. I can’t speak to the show, but after finishing the book, I may decide just to skip the books and watch the show instead. I know I’m in the minority on this, as I’m aware that many people are die-hard fans of this series…but wtf!?! haha I don’t know what was so amazing about this book. Perhaps the books get better the longer you go into the series, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be attempting that feat. Which honestly makes my neglected TBR happy, because this series would be a commitment. There are 19 total books in it, I believe, if you count the 3 novellas that were also released.

*SPOILERS* So let’s discuss why I feel the way I do about the book. First off, it’s a slow-burning small-town romance. The plot is the typical small-town romance. Nothing uber special about it. A city girl moves to a small town to escape something; she’s out of her element and struggles to learn small-town living. Small-town boy falls insta-in-love with her and vows to make her his, breaking down all of her walls and blindsiding her with his awesomeness, and they live happily ever after. Also, throw in the grieving widow trope, an unlikely pairing trope of a nurse and an ex-marine, now bar owner, a second chances (infertility) trope, and a town with a dark secret, and you’ve got Virgin River. The end. That alone had me giving it a 3-3.5 ⭐. Not bad, but not great. It is what it is. Cozy, romantic, predictable, and just meh. The spice scenes between the main couple were decent, not overly graphic, but definitely open-door. So if you happened to have a cozy romance with some spice itch, Virgin River could scratch it for ya.

But I could not stand either of the main love interest characters!!! OMG. Even though by the end of the book, the MMC Jack kind of grew on me, it wasn’t until I read a summary of the book so I could write this review, did I remember…”Oh yeah!!! He’s kind of an asshole!” When we first meet Jack, he seems ok, even though the whole insta-attraction is so annoying. But when he first meets our fish out of water, Mel, she’s whining and bitching about this small town she’s now stuck in. Despite this, he just knows “she’s special” because of how great her ass looks in a pair of jeans. Come on! He’s so attracted and overwhelmed by his first encounter with Mel that he has to run off to Crystal River (a town over) “to get a drink,” which is code for “I’m going to go fuck this chubby blonde I’ve been casually sleeping with for the last two years.” And while he never calls her chubby, his description of her was pretty crappy. He all but says she’s old, wrinkled, used, wears too much makeup, and wears too tight clothing. And, sure, she probably has deeper feelings for him than he does for her, but who cares? Because he has needs, and she’s “awfully good to him.” Give me a freaking break, dude! To ensure we don’t get the wrong idea about Jack and to show he is a good guy, the author has him going with the intention of breaking things off with Charmaine (old chubby broad), because there may be potential for a new person (Mel), and he’s a one-woman kind of man, despite having just met Mel and had a five minute interaction with her! Get real! So we have a hero who leads a woman on for two years, and after a brief interaction with another bitchy woman who looks great in jeans, he’s going to do the right thing and end that two-year casual sex thing, for a maybe chance with the bitchy chick he just met? Make it make sense!!!!!

Speaking of the chubby reference, I honestly started thinking that Robyn Carr had some personal issues with women’s weight, because she liked to point out when a woman was plump, had extra weight, or was tiny. Even when describing Mel’s hands, it was “her tiny hands against my bicep”. It was just so repeatedly and glaringly thrown in there, and it was totally unnecessary. What does the size of a woman really matter? Why does she have to have extra weight or be slim? Can’t a woman just…be a woman?

So now I want to talk about the FMC, Mel/Melinda. She was so annoying and unbelievable. Yes, I felt sorry that she was widowed, and I totally understand wanting to run away and get a change of scenery to help you cope with the loss. But Mel is a city girl. She goes on and on about how much she spends on things, such as $600 on shoes, $400 on highlights for her hair, she drives a BMW and her bright idea is to run off to a rural area, sight unseen, thinking things will be so much calmer, easier, and uncomplicated. Did she not do any research into what being a rural nurse would entail? Did she not make a trip up to see the cabin she would be living in before accepting the job? No! She sells her home, packs up, and just goes. Then bitches and moans about it to anyone who will listen in this new small town. If I had been one of the residents of the town, I would have told her to take her high-tail fancy boot-wearing ass back to L.A. then! Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, lady! Yes, the lady who made the arrangements was misleading about the condition of where she would be living, but Mel, gotta tell ya…you’re an adult, and you have no one to blame but yourself, because you should have checked it out first.

We are reminded frequently about the horrors that Mel has experienced and seen, living in urban L.A. The way she describes it at times, you’d think she was living and working on Skid Row or something. I’m not saying that it isn’t dangerous, and seeing those crazy things probably could happen. Add on top of that her husband was killed in a convenience store robbery gone bad. So the poor woman has even more reasons than most to be overly cautious and wary of strangers and the dangers that lurk around. So please explain to me then, how a woman with this background and life experience, routinely decides to make trips out to the rural areas where drug growers live, and is repeatedly warned “never go alone” because it can be so dangerous for her, like it’s no big deal? Make that make sense!! You may have a fancy degree and got that NP after your name, but clearly, you have absolutely no common sense, woman!

So yeah…I just couldn’t connect with either of the MCs. There was so much I didn’t like about them. There were a few humorous parts that had me chuckling here and there, mostly coming from the old, grouchy doctor that Mel works with. He’s really the only character I liked. One of the other big issues I had about the book was the scene between the teenagers, Ricky and Lizzie. This scene really kind of grossed me out. Mind you, by this point in the story, Mel and Jack are still circling around each other, not even having held hands yet or kissed. But we have a 14-year-old Lizzie who’s just moved to town to live with her aunt, and a young 16-year-old Ricky who, again, falls insta-in-love with her. We are very quickly thrown into a scene where the two are alone in his truck, and as teenagers do, they get carried away and have sex, with no protection. It wouldn’t be so bad…if the scene wasn’t as descriptive as it was!! I don’t want to read about teenagers having sex. Especially not if we haven’t even gotten to the adults getting laid yet! Why was this even included? You could have just closed-door, insinuated that they had unprotected sex, allowing the plot of Ricky to worry about her being pregnant, without telling me the details of their tryst. Gross!

So, needless to say, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book and am not planning on reading any more into the series. The only way that I’d change my mind is if I give the show a chance and I fall in love with it enough to make me want to read more, but that’s highly unlikely. From what I’ve seen on some of the Reddit forums about the show, Mel is just as annoying in the show as she is in the book lol.