Review: Emotional rollercoaster
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 19, 2011
"Without peace of mind, life is just a shadow of its possibilities."'- by Jean Borysenko -3.5 stars.***************SLIGHT SPOILERS***********About my rating: Despite my issues it's a well written, emotional and engrossing story and therefore I rounded up to 4 stars.Wow, deep breath...This was such an emotional rollercoaster and I got worked up. A lot. While reading At Peace I felt angry, annoyed, frustrated, extremely sad, yet at the same time I was happy. Happy for Joe, Violet, and her daughters.Brief synopsis:Violet Winters is a widow with two teenage daughters. During a cold winter night she has to leave her house to tell her annoying neighbor to turn the music down. That's when she meets Joe (Cal) Callahan - her hot-as-s**t, bad boy, player, security expert neighbor. Violet's husband was executed by her stalker and even now he is obsessed and can't let her go. Cal's grandfather's sister married a Giglia and the Giglia's are big time mob. They fight against Hart (Violet's stalker). Cal had briefly worked security for Giglia during the last war Giglia had with Hart. And Cal lost his cousin to that war. For that reason Joe has a personal interest to protect Violet and her girls against Hart.What did work for me:As always Kristen writes terrific family dynamics, good dialogs, and wonderfully fleshed out main and secondary characters. Her writing is not polished, yet it is always honest, real, and emotional. What she writes is really heartfelt, and it is just not essential to write down a "perfect" story.At the beginning of the plot Joe seemed a little bit over the top alpha for my liking. I don't know, it was just...too much! He was really harsh and rude. Sweet Dream's Tate Jackson was a bada** alpha male but if you compare these two...wow, I'd say Tate is a pussycat compared to Joe. Well, I have to take up the cudgels for Joe, though. As the story unfolds he became more accessible and kind of more soft. It was a nice change! Moreover, Joe came to love Violet's girls. It was so sweet to see him interact with these two teenagers. He cared deeply for them and he wanted to protect them.The passion, the hunger, the need between Joe and Vi was palpable. Their chemistry was very good, although there were many ambivalent feelings between these two as well. As always a better communication would have resolved many problems, then again it suited the taciturn and closed off hero.Basically, I liked Violet. I appreciated the fact that she is a very determined and independent single mother. Vi loves her girls deeply and she is there for them and gives her best. She deals with her problems and she does it on her own. With that said, I had my issues and was disappointed when she was "fooling" around with Mike.Vi really liked Mike but ultimately she chose Joe because she needed him to breathe. Joe bears his own hell and Vi made him feel AT PEACE again. Overall I think they fit perfectly.One of the best aspects of At Peace was the part where a very dear person died. Wow, this was so utterly intense and very, very hard to take. Honestly, I was bawling my eyes out because their pain was my pain. The whole process of getting to know that he died and then accepting the anger, the pain, the solace and ultimately attending the funeral was incredibly well written. Absolutely outstanding!BTW, the suspense part of At Peace was absolutely minor. Overall it was a very engaging and certainly worthwhile story. If you can bear the "flaws" I mentioned, then I would certainly recommend you to read At Peace.