great book! my favorite author. ( )

I didn't finish this book. Ms Hoffman failed to make me care enough about the characters, with the possible exception of Kat, to want to continue past page 116. Yes, I gave it a few extra pages beyond my 100-page limit because I wanted to like this book. Alice Hoffman is an author highly recommended by many friends, and I thoroughly enjoyed another of her novels, "The Probable Future." This novel, though, irritated the fluff out of me with the 3rd-person omniscient POV written in the present tense. I much preferred the 1st person narrative through Kat's eyes. Sadly, there was too much "the curtain wafts in the gentle breeze. Ethan looks at his wife in the sunlight and marvels at her beauty" and not enough Kat. When the style of narrative annoys the fire out of me, it's a sure sign that my time would be better spent finding something I'll actually enjoy reading.

Pretty cover, though. ( )

You will find yourself drawn into the lives of Hoffmans characters. The book causes the reader to reexamine what you know to be true.

The town of Monroe is small, and the people are gossipy. Ethan Ford's secret, which is the thing that splits the novel apart, is that he has reinvented himself, from a crime-doer to a good-doer, and yet that means nothing in the wake of the crime he committed when he was "someone else." Jorie, his previously envied wife, the stuck-up girl with the perfect blond hair and beautiful face, becomes the subject of derision and a personal breakdown that forever changes her life and that of her melancholy young son, aptly named Collie. These characters are joined by a woman overcoming cancer and finding true love with a long-suffering schoolmate, the brother of a dead girl who has never forgotten that pain, and a young girl who understands all too clearly the consequences of first love.

I have to say that the turns this novel takes truly surprised me --- I expected a better reception for Ethan, greater forgiveness from certain members of his inner circle; and it is surprising to read about a place where forgiveness does not come easily. It is just one of the stark and honest things that happen in fictional Monroe, which is a place that exists in a timeless world, unfettered by the properties of present-day popular culture. It is a cautionary fable, a fairy tale with a true-life Grimm ending, although it has shoots of possible redemption at the end. ( )

Loved it, Love her, what more can I say. Read it. ( )