Review: 3.5
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2012
Isn't She Lovely by Bettye GriffinThis is a story about relationships based on lies; and how those lies can affect every aspect of your life.Tracy meets sexy and single Illinois Attorney General Keith Norwood after his teen-aged son, Josh, takes his grandfathers car and accidental hits Tracy's young son, Gabe, breaking his leg.  Josh leaves the scene of the crime.  When his conscience gets the better of him, Josh tells his grandfather. Since Keith is running for Governor, Keith and his attorney concoct a plan to keep this crime from the police. Keith decides since Gabe wasn't hurt all that badly (a broken leg) Josh can be punished at home just as well as the court can do.  They also decide that they should offer Tracy, Gabe's mother, a `payoff'; to keep this all quiet.The synopsis for the book is quite accurate so I won't go further.  I will say that almost all the character's have some flaws.  Some of these flaws are big some small, but everyone has them and I appreciated this.  Yet, the flaws that Keith had are just almost insurmountable.  Keith is `dating' a TV news anchor and for the life of me I cannot see how a man such as Keith can be so nave and weak willed when it comes to Wendy.  He knows he needs to break up with her, since he really wants some sort of relationship with Tracy plus he was never serious about Wendy in the first plase, yet Keith won't break up with her. He tries to manipulate Wendy into breaking up with him.  I get the feeling that Keith liked the idea of having this woman at his disposal and in my estimation Keith lost a lot of my sympathy with his inability to sever the relationship when he knew it was going nowhere, and would only hurt Wendy more in the end.Actually, I could not understand how such a smart man, and a high placed politician at that, would even DATE a TV newscaster in the first place and then not have the testicles to break up with her...not smart for a smart man.  However, it made for very interesting conflict!I may not agree with how Ms Griffin chose to portray her characters and how they live their lives, but I can say that they are fairly well written.  Ms Griffin has the ability to make even this unbelievable story come to life and by the end of it, the story and the characters do become a bit more believable and human.If I could change anything, it would be the repetitiveness of much of the story; feelings and emotions told and re-told repeatedly.  I almost felt as if the author didn't trust us as readers to `get it' (the problems that Keith and Tracy live with daily)  as these damaged characters try to get their lives together.There is the HEA at the end, and it was a hell of an odd ride to get there!