Book Review

This past weekend the weather was predicted to be really nasty so I planned on staying inside, curled up with a good book and/or watching movies. Well, it was drizzly Saturday afternoon, rained hard in the middle of the night and then was nice on Sunday. Seriously, I could have given a better prediction, but that's not the point. The point is, I decided to stick with my weekend plan and read a book.



Linda Barrett is a member of my local chapter. She doesn't come to the meetings often but she came out last year and spoke about how she sold her Pilgrim Cove series (complete with the diagrams she used to pitch it). Anyway, they had her latest book as a give away at the meeting - The Daughter He Never Knew - and I really liked the cover. I didn't win a copy but when it (along with the rest of the series) was up for auction (I believe Brenda Novak's auction for Juvenile Diabetes - which is coming up again soon), I bid on it. That time I DID win. I read the series in order and just LOVED the way Linda wrote the stories (that's the series that has the Retired Old Men Eating Out, aka ROMEOs), so when her next book came out (A Man of Honor), I snatched it up. Loved it too.

So, it should be no surprise that I tell you, when her latest book (Houseful of Strangers) came out, I went right out and bought it. And that's what I read this weekend.

I absolutely loved it. It's a story about people who are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. Allison Truesdale is a veterinarian whose son died about two years earlier. A month later her husband, unable to cope with it all drank himself silly and got behind the wheel of the car and killed himself (no one else was involved). Allison really hasn't recovered from all of that and accepts a temporary job with a large animal veterinarian who needs help with his practice because he's broken his arm and can't do the job. Allison will be living with Eric Mitchell (the vet with the broken arm) while she works for/with him. Allison knows his mother, Ruth (who I loved in this story), lives with Eric. But she didnt know Eric had a son - not to mention that he's about the age her son was when he died.

Eric, on the other hand, went through a very bitter divorce. His wife was from the city and couldn't handle life in the country as a country vet's wife and ripped his heart out when she left, so he's not issueless himself and has a preconceived idea about Allison because she happens to live in the city herself.

Meanwhile, there's Danielle (Dani). Dani ran away from home when she was 13 and has been living on the street for two years now. She keeps a journal (that was given to her by a runaway counselor)...well actually she keeps several and one is labeled RIP where she keeps a log of all the runaways she's known who have died (she does this because she believes they matter and she doesn't want to forget them - but the list is getting pretty long and she hates that). She's at the train station one day when she sees her father (who abused her, both physically and sexually), flashing her picture around so she buys a ticket on the first train out of there. Of course it takes her to the same country town our other characters are in and of course they find her and invite her to stay with them and of course they become "family". In that respect it was predictable but, it was so wonderfully told. I was crying as I read the story. It wasn't the sobbing kind of crying but the kind of crying you can't stop, where the tears are just flowing, but it's a good cry...you feel good about what is happening.

And then I started to ask myself why it affected me that way and this is what I came up with. All these people were broken in some way (well, except for Ruth and Eric's son) and they couldn't seem to fix themselves but coming together, they each gave each other what they needed. They completed each other (all of them, not just the hero and heroine) and made each other whole. They were a family. And I guess that just touched me in some way. I don't know what that says about me (okay, I guess I do but if I haven't already revealed that in what I've said...) but it did touch me.

So, on a scale of one to five, I'd give it an eight and a half.

What have you read recently (or at any point) that touched you deeply on an emotional level? Or, if you don't want to answer that, what are you reading now? :~)

~L