Review: The Surgeon's Daughter
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 31, 2014
The Howard family has a name theme -- all three children are given the month in which they were born (Mrs. Howard's name is June).  Ember, the story's heroine, has the full name December.  Her younger sister is April and her younger brother is Gus (short for, good guess, Augustus -- fortunately he was not born in February.). You would think parents with this naming quirk might have a sense of fun but in this story, that is not the case.From the first pages we learn that Ember's dad is a surgeon working for the US Army, deployed in Afghanistan.  The story is filled with military life references, some of which I was not aware of, such as the white flag with a blue star that military families hang in their front window when a family member is away from home on a mission.  It was interesting to read the details of military procedure and the effects on the family members who are left behind, at home.Within this military family story is an all-American love story.  The Colorado-based characters in love go months (and ultimately longer) with delayed gratification and very little in the way of shared interests -- they do not ski together or snowboard or hike, or play chess.  They watch t.v.  They eat ice cream.  Their common interest is hockey -- he plays, she watches.  Ember is repeating a past mistake, burying herself in the boy's interest and plan.  Surely she must have a hobby besides going for a run, and studying, and bailing out her selfish sister.  I want more for her -- more friends, more dimension -- and for future lead characters from Mrs. Yarros.* Spoiler *In the end, I do not agree with Ember's mother, who tells Ember that love may be a once-in-a-lifetime event.  It is my experience that attractive, healthy, intelligent people can find and fall in love more than one time.  I also do not support the emotionally unstable mother inserting her opinion in an adult daughter's highly personal situation, where it can take on too much weight and carry more influence than it should.  Mrs. Howard's opinion sets an entire string of events in motion.  Once again, Ember watches as her destiny (solitary, lonely), one she had been firmly set against, unfolds before her.  Each day in college, at that age, has the emotional energy of one week for an older adult.  Ember has three years of college ahead, with lots of Skype love and no ring.  Searching for the happy in that ending.