Review: Heartbreaking Yet Hopeful...Highly Recommended
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 21, 2012
Ben's journey is one all-too-familiar. He's used to fast living and worldly pursuits yet is emotionally stunted and finds it difficult to deal with a life-changing monkey wrench thrown into his party lifestyle and going-through-the-motions as a carefree bachelor. Kathryn calls herself pathetic, and she's not too far off-the-mark in that self-assessment as the novel begins because she's too absorbed with worrying and whining about meeting her Prince Charming. However, when she looks past her single status and focuses on her professional life as a social worker and tends to the needs of her patients' families, the story takes off when she meets Ben on her hospice ward where his father is a patient. It's a sweet, evolving relationship between the two as they each learn lessons in life, loss and surrendering long-held fears and beliefs and find comfort and peace with one another that transitions into deep feelings of affection and then into love. The author's tendency toward frequent POV shifts tends to be disjointed and disconcerting at times, but she's written well-drawn characters with whom the reader can readily identify and embrace. Her dialogue is realistic, the secondary characters are wonderful, and the writing is sharp overall. It's not an easy book to read at times, but it makes the reader think and care, and that alone makes it well worth the journey. Well done, Ms. Stallings. This book was provided to me by the author in exchange for my honest review, and I thank her for it.