Review: Emotionally deep, bittersweet, & ultimately romantic.....
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 28, 2013
I like how the story starts out with Lori Clay going to her seven years old son's school, in order to take him his forgotten lunch.  In a few short pages this reader was emotionally invested in her young life and the battle she was winning.  Against all odds she'd managed being a single mother and even had plans to go back to school in order to get a better job to support her child.  Lori's battle was supported and shared with her older sister Bella.  I loved the history they shared and the hurdles they'd cleared in order to become independent of the foster homes they'd been forced into after losing their mother.  When Lori is killed.....this reader then wondered where the story could go because such a dear character was lost right from the beginning of the book.  What follows however, is every bit as heartrending for the reader.  In the end I knew that these first pages had to be told in order for true story to unfurl………Bella Clay was living a lie in California.  In order to help support the life that her younger sister (Lori Clay) was building up for her son was something Bella made priority of.  Bella had lost her dream of becoming an actress and was then offered the opportunity to make big amounts of money in the porn industry.  This is where the reader cringes but the emotional struggle Bella goes through is written in a way that the reader applauds Bella for her determination to help support Lori and her son.  Bella hated what she'd been forced into (she'd forced herself through the extreme sense of responsibility she had for her sister Lori).  This reader felt Bella had a very low sense of self-esteem due to the abuse she'd suffered in bad foster homes and in many ways felt she did not deserve better.Lori Clay then loses her life and leaves her seven year old son Ethan alone.  When Bella comes to claim her nephew it is so sad what she goes through in order to keep her nephew on an even keel.  She devotes her life to her nephew's well-being and part of that is keeping him in his home and at his school which means Bella has to start over, again.  Thankfully, she finds very supportive people like Roylyn who gives Bella a job as a waitress.  This is where a recovery process starts for Bella; recovery of 'self'.Grant Brady is a teacher at the elementary school that Ethan (Bella's nephew) attends.  He is everything we women dream of as man-perfection: handsome, sensitive, single, and loving.  It's a dream ladies.....nurture it and watch the dream grow!  Once Grant meets Bella he is clearly smitten with the beautiful young woman who had moved to town to be her nephew's guardian.  Bella is not easy to woo.....she feels like she's not worthy of happiness, love, or acceptance.  Grant Brady: he prevails and slowly finds a way to reach Bella's well hidden heart.There is drama, angst, and a romance that slowly builds into a natural crescendo of long lasting love.  It's not forced.  It's real life.  The biggest hurdles are met with the strength that is human spirit.  I quite enjoyed this book.  It entertained me in its infinite detailed writing.  I wasn't sure I'd come to love Bella because of the choices she'd made but in the end I understood why she'd made those choices.  I also realized why she felt so little self-worth due to the life she'd led, the lies she'd told, and the horrific things that had happened to her in foster homes.  In a nightmare scene in California, tragedy had found Bella and it was through tragedy that Bella found the beginning of her redemption.  Ultimately; she finds a brand new sense of self-worth.Thank you dear authoress for what I found to be a wonderful tale of how we can all get through the demons that plague and haunt us.  It also takes a village which in this case was the town of Madison Falls - a town that came together in spirit to help a young woman through so much darkness that she kept hidden.  The book made me FEEL......and for that it gets five stars.NOTE: I got my copy of this free with just the author's request that I might read it.  I only review if I like something and won't review below three stars.  Anything I state in my review is my interpretation of the story.  Each reader is different and that is what’s so great about romance novels.  We each find something different; maybe something we're looking for and something we read into a story.  In this book I found a depth of human spirit that I think is within each one of us.