It may be because I just finished 5 books about serial killers, but I really enjoyed this lovely story about a woman who overcomes a tragedy and falls in love again. It was sweet without being too sweet and I really enjoyed watching the two main characters interact. It made for an excellent palate cleanser.
“When you don’t know what to do for yourself, do something for somebody else.”
Margaret Jacobsen ignores ALL of her instincts, and gets into a plane flown by her unqualified boyfriend. He crashes the plane, and walks away, while Margaret ends up with serious burns and spinal damage. While recovering the hospital, she has time to reexamine her relationship with her USELESS boyfriend, reconnect with her long-lost sister, and fall in lust (at least) with her hunky but silent therapist.
“We’re just going to have to wait for-” Then she saw us, and looked Ian over, in his flannel shirt and jeans. “The Brawny paper-towel guy.”
It sounds simple, but I just loved the way the story was told. Margaret has a lot of steel in her, but it takes a horrible accident to help her access it. She’s tough, but she’s vulnerable as well and the author does a great job of balancing these traits. Her sister disappeared from her life years ago, and reappears after the accident (full disclosure — I thought the sister was a hallucination for a bit but she is NOT so please don’t let that distract you for 50 pages like it did me). They reconnect painfully and slowly, but I love how the backstory was revealed. And of course, the therapist Margaret falls for is handsome and troubled, as a love interest should be.
“Needing to find reasons to live had forced me to build a life worth living.”
Center packs a lot of story into just a few hundred pages. I really enjoyed this book — it was hard to put down and has a very satisfying ending.