Pros: Characters that draw you into the story
Cons: Weak writing
The Bottom Line:
Travel back in time
For a chaste Christian romance
That's enjoyable
Can Tomorrow Bring Romance from Tragedy?
I often mention to be how big the list of books I want to
read is. I'm not exaggerating. Take this book, for example. Whatever Tomorrow Brings has been on my to be
read list since Lori Wick published it in 1992.
And yet I am finally getting around to reading it.
This book is the first of four romances she wrote about the
Donovan family in 1871. And the reason I
have been intrigued is the majority of the action takes place in the town where
I grew up. Granted, I didn't recognize a
big of it here, not even a place name.
But it was still a fun connection.
As the novel opens, however, the Donovan family is serving
in Hawaii as
missionaries. They've been there so long
that the two younger kids, aged 14 and 9, don't even remember the
mainland. 20 year old Kaitlin barely
remembers it, in fact.
But all that is about to change. They are taking a long discussed furlough to
visit relatives in San Francisco . Unfortunately, tragedy strikes during their
visit. Deciding to relocate permanently
to California , the father sets out to close
their affairs in Hawaii ,
leaving Kaitlin in charge of her younger brother and sister.
The trio start out staying with an aunt, but after a horrid
encounter, they set out on their own for Santa
Rosa , where Kaitlin has found a teaching
position. It is also there that she
meets Marshall Riggs and his family. He
is immediately smitten with the pretty teacher, but she isn't interested. Will that change? Can Kaitlin take care of herself and her
siblings until her father returns?
What made this book work so well for me was the
characters. While their flaws were
minimal, they really came to life. I
cared what happened to Kaitlin, Marshall, and their families. While I found the amount of tears shed as the
book progressed to be a little too much at times, I'll confess I choked up
several times along with them. I truly
felt like they were friends, and I didn't want to leave.
And the love of the characters overcame a predictable
plot. The story actually starts out
rather slowly. We're about 75 pages in
before Marshall
even comes on the scene. When he does,
it's rather obvious how the story will end.
But I was hooked on every page, often reading much later then I should
have. There were a couple sub-plots
weaved into the story that I couldn't predict, so those kept me reading as
well.
Being a Christian novel, the romance is very chaste. That's a plus in my book. There were a couple times where Christianity
was a focus of the book, bur for the most part, the book never became
preachy. Instead, it was incorporated as
part of the character's lives.
The biggest flaw in the book is the writing. My two biggest pet peeves involve being told
how characters are feeling instead of being shown and frequent view point
switches. Both of those were here in
spades. Heck, some times we learned about
a conversation in just a few sentences instead of actually seeing it. As I got into the story, I began to notice
these flaws less and less, however.
Whatever Tomorrow Brings is a light, innocent Christian
romance. It won't be for everyone, but
it is a charming tale that will entertain the target audience.
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