Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, and Angus & Robertson
No End to Love*
Good People Try to Love Again
The book opens with a heart-rending scene where Adam loses his wife in a hostage situation. In the years afterward, his guilt at his failure as both a husband and a police officer are soul crushing. He actually retreats to his hometown with his daughter to heal and regroup as he decides how to move on his life. Ellie has inherited her grandparents’ cottage at the beach, and her new neighbor happens to be Adam. Ellie is a preschool teacher, and Adam’s daughter, Sophie, will be one of her students. They both feel an immediate attraction towards one another, but because of their histories, neither is quite ready for a relationship. But a friendship grows as they start to learn more about each other and interact because of Sophie.
Will Adam get over his guilt about his wife? Will he be able to move on to a new relationship, as his wife had pressed him to do in her last moments? Will Ellie’s past with men, which caused the professional problems for her, keep her from allowing a relationship with Adam?
Oh, my gosh! This book is quite an emotional ride from beginning to end. The opening scene is breathtaking and packs an emotional wallop. You can’t help but feel for Adam as he goes through it; the author did a great job making Adam a sympathetic character from the scene. It allows us to understand his struggles in the book to a much greater degree than if she had just told us about his past. I love Adam’s relationships with his mother and his brothers. I enjoy it when stories like this show a loving and supportive family. Too often in novels, families cause strife and conflict. I love it when the family is safe harbor, a soft place to fall. But Adam is now ready to spread his wings and become a bit more independent, and his family is supportive of that, too. They just want him to be happy.
Ellie is such a worthy heroine. Her backstory about how she came to her profession is beautifully rendered; she is genuinely a good and decent person who cares about everyone she meets. She wants to make a difference for her students. She’s the perfect preschool teacher, especially for the little ones who are having troubles in their lives. The two children highlighted in this story are both sweet and adorable in their own ways. Sophie is precocious, verbal, and precious. Poor little Sammy, he’s been through so much in his short life. Even though, of course, this is a fictional account, it is sweet to see how Ellie is so loving and compassionate with these little souls who have known so much tragedy.
The author has a very good sense of pacing and story structure. She has beautifully paired the opening scene with a scene at the end that gives Adam closure about his feelings of inadequacy. It was perfectly done.
I’ll freely admit this book made me ugly cry more than once; but to me, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you love heartfelt contemporary romance is a lot of depth and complexity, you might enjoy this book as well.
