Review: The Golden Hearts Club by Cinda K. Swalley

An uplifting novel about two sisters who befriend a family on a California horse ranch, Cinda K. Swalley’s The Golden Hearts Club is a feel-good story about spreading kindness and finding love in the most unlikely of places.

Close-knit siblings Katie and Megan Summers decide to take an epic cross-country road trip following Katie’s college graduation. Katie is a little more nervous and hesitant to take the plunge; she’s a passionate romantic who’s just gone through a terrible breakup with a cheating boyfriend. She’s also struggling to determine the meaning behind the strange prescient dreams she’s been having – are they visions from the past or images from her future?

Megan, on the other hand, is more interested in traveling and seeing the world than finding true love, so she can’t wait to set out on the open road. The sisters’ adventure leads them across the United States, to places in Florida, New Orleans, Texas, Arizona, and California. They encounter an entertaining cast of characters along the way, including a lonely Native American woman who Katie has seen in her dreams, and aim to help and spread kindness wherever they go.

Katie refers to this touching goal as “The Golden Hearts Club” – a mission to inspire joy through small acts of goodwill. However, when Katie and Megan accidentally end up on a California horse ranch run by a feuding family, their task will become much more difficult. The siblings meet Jay and Luke Larone – attractive brothers and heirs to a vast pharmaceutical company. A potential merger with another company is on the horizon, but corrupt relatives, illegal trafficking, and devious schemes loom in the background. The sisters are falling for Jay and Luke, but when a shocking mishap occurs, it complicates events and relationships even further.

The Golden Hearts Club is a touching story about two young women trying to better understand themselves and find happiness along the way. The novel is generally lighthearted, and would appeal to readers looking for an inspirational tale without too much tension or stress happening during the journey. That said, this gentleness does create a few tonal problems: certain sections of the novel feel more like a YA book, with Katie and Megan often seeming younger than their ages, while other passages later in the text are decidedly for adult readers. The book creates an authentic feeling of calm and reassurance, as if the real “Golden Hearts Club” is the book itself, but sometimes the story may be too light than necessary. The novel is most successful in moments where there’s a bit more pushback and discomfort – when the siblings must prove that “The Golden Hearts Club” is an idea worth fighting for.

It can also feel like the story takes a while to get started, as the sisters’ trip before arriving at the ranch is described in great detail over multiple chapters, before getting to the crux of the story. Some of the siblings’ experiences prior to meeting the Larone brothers and certain characters from the road trip end up relating back to the larger plot, but most of this information recedes to the background once Katie and Megan get involved with the California family. The heart of Swalley’s work really lies at the ranch, particularly for the way that Katie’s preconceived notions about destiny and the world get tested.

These issues aside, The Golden Hearts Club is a charming and multilayered read, replete with heartwarming romance, cutthroat business dealings, and an inspiring moral center that is unique in contemporary fiction and romance.