Review: Minnie Chase Makes Amends
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 8, 2014
Unexpected, surprising! Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake, by Helen MacArthur, has a fresh concept that drives the story line.Minnie Chase, intellectually brilliant, lacks some necessary skills when dealing with people, whether they are clients, friends, or lovers. We meet Minnie Chase at work, being regaled with a list of her social mistakes. Her boss, a cold hearted business woman, declares Minnie a menace.Unfortunately for Minnie, her boss is correct once again. At a business dinner with one of the worlds most highly revered venture capitalists, Minnie blurts out what is hoped to be a carefully kept secret by this powerful man. Her comments recorded, go viral, and all to soon the entire world knows too much, his life forever altered.Minnie, immediately fired from her job, heads home in a state of confusion, trying to devise a way to make amends, only to stumble upon her fiancé in bed with another woman.Minnie Chase Makes a Mistake is the journey of one woman trying to make right the wrongs set in motion by her blunder. Immediately she seeks out Ashton Greene, the injured party, to apologize. Her efforts take her from London to San Francisco, where she finally catches up with him. Here her quest expands from apologizing to helping him come to terms with a debilitating disease.Helen MacArthur weaves into her novel the angst and frustration of seeing life unravel in ways that cannot be controlled, but must accepted. Minnie must accept that her fiancé does not love her the way she thought, Ashton Greene must accept that money, power, and savvy mean very little to his very human body.However, there are things Minnie Chase and Ashton Greene can control, changes they can effect. This book is ultimately about learning that life can be unravel, can be helter-skelter, but with time it can be remade from very unexpected sources.This book is unique in that while the tale is full of hope and love, it is not a romance novel. It is the journey of self discovery which leads to self acceptance.