Review: Fantasy and not in a good way...
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 01 27, 2013
******Warning - spoilers in this review*******************************The basis for this book is so unbelievable that it defies even my ability to suspend reality.  The basic plot is a female attorney is called to defend pregnant woman who had a few too many alcoholic beverages and then ran over a little girl who died.  The kicker to this being the said pregnant woman had an affair with the attorney's husband and is now pregnant with his baby.  The attorney continues to be the woman's lawyer and as she is sentenced to prison, custody of the baby goes to the attorney's husband.To make the situation even more contrived, the baby has Down's syndrome.  As these trite cliche's go, the attorney eventually comes to love the child after everyone from her best friend to her own parents have browbeaten her to accept the product of her husband's adulterous affair that in his own words, "did not mean anything, it was just that both of them were so busy and the woman led me on".  In an act of supposed sacrifice the mother gives the attorney and her adulterous lover full custody of the child and goes off into the sunset towards a fairly unhappy future.Please,  if you are going to write a cliche at least try to make it believable. What decent attorney would not recuse themselves over such a major conflict of interest?  And what kind of prosecutor would not bring this up at trial or after for judicial review, especially when he does not get the desired verdict over a case?  At the very least there should have been a mistrial and a bar association review over the attorney's conduct.Better writers than this one have tried and failed at making a redeemable character out of an adulterer.  This one did worse than most.  There is no attempt at even trying to demonstrate a rebuilding of a marriage after a huge betrayal. There is one insincere apology by the husband and then the couple coexist in a house together with no talking, counseling or understanding about what went wrong in their relationship until the plot moppet makes his appearance. Even after the moppet appearance there is no real discussion of the marital relationship, everyone just slips into their appointed roles and the story moves on.It is pretty obvious that the author wanted the attorney in a situation where she had to demonstrate her saintliness and accept all the garbage handed to her and the author accomplishes this with a deus ex machina manipulation that was so contrived I winced when I read it.  The attorney can't have children of her own of course so the reader is supposed to respect and admire this woman who accepts her husband's betrayal with no real discourse and then proceeds to use the baby as a replacement for the children she can't have after she selflessly defends the woman who participated in this situation. She then goes against her husband's wishes to keep the child in contact with his mother while in prison.  All this happens after one sleepless night on the attorney's part, I might add.I do appreciate the effort it takes to write a book but please, have some respect for your reader's intelligence and write some reasons for the acceptance of a betrayal.  Have some meaningful dialect about how the relationship got to this and do not, for pity's, sake have the betrayed wife's parents trying to force their daughter to accept her husband's little indiscretion because they want a grandchild so badly.This is the 21st century,  and I don't know of any woman outside of cliched fiction that handles that situation well.  It is perfectly acceptable to walk away from a man who betrays you. You can certainly acknowledge the child's need for his father but there is nothing on earth that says you have to remain or should remain in that situation even if the child is disabled.  At least you shouldn't stay unless and until there is a whole lot more communication than happened here.Sadly this book is an trite cliche in the forgiveness trope with no redemption and an insult to most reader's intelligence.  It stretches the bounds of belief and really amounts to a lot of emotional contrivance with no real resolution or satisfaction from a well told tale.  I hope the writer can do better in the future but as far as this story goes,  it is an epic fail.