Review: A wildly romantic tale of soul mates.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 2, 2014
I’ve read a smattering of Mr. Wolfe’s work. Even when not over the moon with it, I like it. He has an Everyman, natural style that is enormously accessible, in which I imagine I can hear his voice. And it is pleasant to the ear.And now, Mr. Wolfe has produced this phenomenal work. Kendra is a bang-up romance, beautifully crafted and surprisingly unsentimental in its celebration of the soul-mate paradigm.I’m uncertain what else to say about it, as just about everything constitutes a spoiler. But I’ll try.Keith and Kendra meet by accident and instantly bond. Keith, whose voice in those early pages smacks of asshat-edness, sheds his veneer of cynicism when overwhelmed by the notion that he and Kendra are meant to be together. Happily, she feels the same way, and their relationship rockets along.Tragedy strikes. The upshot is that Kendra winds up in a coma and on life support.Now, the subtitle of this work is An Astral Lovestory, so I think it’s safe to reveal that Keith and Kendra’s temporal connexion transforms into a paranormal one. A meeting of souls – or spirits, or energy – who experience a resplendent communion on an astral plane, even though he is very much alive, and she, not so much.Plot-wise, I can’t reveal more. I can reveal that I got misty reading this novel. I’m blaming the wine I was consuming along with it.The narrative questions the ironic: that some who believe in God, spirits, and an afterlife can’t believe something outside their experience – the irony being that, for most of us on this side of death, there is no demonstrable experience with God, spirits, or an afterlife . . . so believers should be more open, more willing to examine the tenets of those beliefs.There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .The novel also explores the meaning of life, issues of life-support and pulling plugs. The fine line between imagination and reality, and the even finer one between perceived sanity and insanity.And love. The meaning of love. Kendra and Keith’s love is not gushy. Not corny or schmaltzy. It is as flawless as flawed humans can make it. Undefined, it reads as naturally and truly as breathing. It simply is. Meant to be.