Review: The Impact of Moments
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 7, 2013
3 1/2 Stars**I received this book in exchange for an honest review**A Moment is a story about two people, Lily & Ryan, whom have had their fair share of hardships and are simply navigating through life the best that they can. Lily is a 21-year-old college student, but has more responsibilities than a `normal' young adult her age. She has an autistic 7 years old son and a mother suffering from MS.Lily goes out one night with her best friend, Alex. Enters Ryan, Alex's cousin. Ryan is a former marine and currently an MMA fighter. Besides fighting in the MMA, he also combats serious demons from his past. This is not a love at first sight encounter; in fact, for most of the night, these two barely acknowledge each other, but as a specific event unfolds these two leaden souls connect in that `moment'. (In order to not provide a spoiler, the event & the `moment' shared between these two characters will not be shared.) But I will tell you that the title is definitely a statement regarding the impact that moments in life can have and how these `moments' have changed the course of the characters' lives in this story.Both Lily & Ryan are likable characters and the author skillfully deals with their emotional turmoil and heart wrenching struggles, which include sexual assault, abuse, abandonment, depression & suicide.For me personally, the story stared off extremely slow and I muddled through it at first. I am glad that I stuck with it as about a third of the way through it started to click with me. Although this story was a challenging read emotionally and it had an arduous beginning, the story was intensely powerful and the writing was excellent. (Yes, I have read others' grievances regarding grammatical errors, but they were really limited IMO and did not take away from the context of the story.) Just FYI, I do not hand out 5 star ratings frequently...I would, however, have assigned this book 4 stars indicating that `I really liked it' if it would have grabbed me from the very beginning, but as I stated, the latter two-thirds of the book was excellent, earning it a solid 3  stars!