Maria V. Ciletti

Renee's life is set. She's married to Tom, has two girls, Lindsey and Sara, lives in the same town that she grew up in and has a good, solid life. Then, it all gets metaphorically blown to hell and flipped upside down and inside out. Most of the story takes place after that following Renee as she deals with everything that's thrown at her and her family. Some of it she deals with well, and some of it... not so well, but we the readers get to go on the whole crazy journey.

I liked the novel for the most part. This will probably come out wrong here (even though I've revised it a few times). But I really, really liked how flawed Renee was (i.e. more than once I wanted to slap her upside the head for some of the insensitive or stupid things she did or said). This-- not perfect-- part of the character made her seem very real. Sometimes in these romance/literature novels it's outside forces or whatever that gives the drama to the novel while the characters themselves are perfect in every way. And, that's not really how it works in real life, not to mention in those books the perfect characters can just get boring. Not quite knowing what was going to come out of Renee's mouth was definitely not boring.

I was also really surprised by one of the twists that happened. Totally didn't see it coming when I really should have, and that made the rest of the book exciting since I wasn't totally sure I know how the author would end the book.

I do have to comment that here and there in the narrative the prose seemed a bit square. But, then again there were other places that flowed so well that I could easily see it in my head.

Oh... and there was even a little fantasy in the narrative-- a full time job at a public library-- (sorry, bad joke. :))

All in all I liked the book. It was about an intense subject, but it was well done and there were some great light and funny parts in it too.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the author hoping that I would review and enjoy it, and, well, duh, it's a free book, of course I'm gonna read it an review it... (and enjoy it too) :)… (más)

An interesting book for sure. I've been wanting to read this one for quite awhile. I'm not sure exactly why, but something int he book description caught my eye the first time I saw it and it stuck with me.

I'll start off with the one big thing that sorta threw me off during most of the reading. It just felt like a very dated story. It was a sort of underlying feeling during the whole book. And, while by the end I did realize why it was like that, I don't believe that at the beginning of the book there was any indication to when it took place, and so I, wrongly, assumed that it was more contemporary than it actually was.

The book is about Mina Thomas and Regan Martin (yes, like the President, a joke that cracked me up in the book). They're both nurses at a Nursing Home. Regan a newly minted one just out of Nursing School and Mina, one with more experience who is tasked with teaching Regan how to do the job. There's also Mina's husband Sean, a police officer who seems to specialize in crime scene investigation, and his new partner from Cleveland, who also happens to be a woman. It's quite a complicated plot in some ways, lots of moving parts, and yet in other parts it's quite simple. Mina simply wants to find herself and find love that makes her feel whole.

I really liked the Nursing Home scenes, they jumped off the page at me. Although I will say that while a lot of the details were intriguing, some of them were a bit-- icky-- too.

I was also surprised about halfway through the story because I thought that it was going to go one way, and instead it took an unexpected turn another way. Not a turn that was out of the narrative, I just didn't see the story going that way. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

The novel also reminded me a little bit of the movie Gray Matters. Not so much that the story lines were the same, but that both works had the same feel behind them.

Overall I thought it was a good piece of fiction. Well written, well thought out and I really liked the end, closure, with just a hint at open-endedness (since this is the first book in the series).

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the author hoping that I would review and enjoy it, and, well, duh, it's a free book, of course I'm gonna read it an review it... (and enjoy it too).… (más)