Review: Parts of the story were so real while other parts missed the mark.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 14, 2013
I got a copy of this book when the author offered it for free and then it came up as a free book in exchange for a review at another site, I thought to myself.... Well, I read the book and feel that I can honestly give some input to other readers about this book. So I am going to try.As other reviewers have stated, This story is an emotional roller coaster and I think that the author describes many of the emotions very, very correctly. I can understand now why a woman would return to a physically and emotionally abusive relationship and of course why she would be ashamed and keep it a secret from her family and friends. The one scene in the book in regards to anger, frustration and everything coming to a head is where she is driving and trying to call to press charges against her abusive husband was dead on with some of my feelings of anger and frustration in my life. The parts of the book with the horse seem accurate to me. I wish the character liked the dog more because the dog was giving all he had to support her.The parts of the story that missed the mark was the new romance for this woman. While I do not disagree with her getting into a new relationship while recovering from this and I like how the author held off on the new relationship truly developing before enough time had past for it not to be a rebound relationship, I thought that the beginning of the new relationship was too typical of a romance story. Girl meets boy, Girl hates boy, Girl won't stay away from boy she hates.....I don't think the above is a spoiler alert because it is the way any Harlequin Romance is written, which I stopped reading in my late teens because they were so unreal to life. In this story it felt like the author was combining a true life story of domestic abuse and the feelings that come with that and a fairy tale story that just is not believable.I think that this author could have offered the reader more with her obvious ability in describing emotions and writing them so I as a reader 'felt' them. I hope that in her future writing she doesn't fall back into a comfortable niche and gives her reader all that she has the ability of conveying in every part of the story she is telling.