Review: Welcome love, goodby love
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 11, 2014
Live by Mary Ann Rivers is a romance based on a hero and heroine who are both unselfish and deeply in love with each other.Destiny Burnside is existing during a very bad year.  Her father passed away, she lost her job and her sister had a horrific accident.  She's been trying to keep the family together since her father passed away and continues to look for a new job.  She has had to sell everything to keep herself existing, so she has to go to the Lakefield Public Library every day for her mandated job searches for her unemployment.  The high point of Destiny's day at the library is she gets to see "the woodcarver" who is working at the library's restoration project.Hefin Thomas is "the woodcarver" employed at the library for the restoration project.  He has watched Destiny every day as she comes into the library.  He is finishing this last project before leaving the US and returning to Wales.  He has experienced unemployment first hand since he moved from Wales ten years ago to be with his girlfriend.  They had married after arriving in the US but his unemployment and their haste into a relationship made for tough times that just couldn't be overcome.  He is now divorced and ready to return home and begin working on engineering projects that he had left behind.Mary Ann Rivers did an excellent job of describing the emotional turmoil that is felt on people who are unemployed.  Hefin and Destiny both expressed their loss of dignity and confidence in their abilities extremely well.  Hefin was there for Destiny when it all finally crashed down on her.The principal secondary characters in this novel were Destiny's brothers, Sam and PJ and her sister, Sarah.  Of Destiny's family, I liked PJ the best.  He seemed to have the least amount of emotional baggage that he carried into adulthood.  There was another character, Betty who was her landlady/surrogate mother.  Betty was always there for Destiny when she needed her.  I would love to have Betty for a neighbor.Although it is a romance, it's also very adult in that in many ways Hefin and Destiny are very pragmatic about their relationship and even when it turns from friendship and attraction into love, they are both aware that it may have a finite ending.  I also liked the way that Mary Ann would desribe Destiny in explicit detail, such as "bony elbows" or "bony knees" and all of Destiny's freckles.  Her description made Destiny a richer character because she wasn't "perfect" but she was beautiful to Hefin.  I don't know of anyone who wouldn't appreciate being in a relationship where your flaws are accepted and you are still beautiful.I was surprised and pleased by the ending.  It is definitely a richly poetic book in many ways and yet a complelling romance.This book was provided to me by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.