Kathryn Shay

I liked the vivid display, and variety, of how firefighter dangers cause stresses for loved ones. That research was very well presented, and visceral.

While I found the characters engaging and the plot acceptable, there were two strikes against me giving it a higher rating. One, the research done was laid in thickly here and there. This is always a danger when you have to do a lot of research, and the author was less experienced back then, but since it was revised and this wasn't more subtle, it's still a drawback. Firefighters probably won't mind. :) And two: this may also be related to inexperience, but I suspect is more habit: there is a certain set of words used in certain situations and it doesn't vary. I need a bigger vocabulary. I need deeper emotion described vividly, and there's some. But it is limited.

Judging by the cover above, it's the original. I read the re-worked version of this novel, according to the author's note. It is currently free on Amazon.… (altro)

A friend sent me this book in a box of books. I'm not sure if she read it or not. I don't recognize the author so my guess is that this is the first of her books that I've read. I've also not read the first two books in this series and don't plan to seek them out.

The minuses far outweigh the pluses in this book for me.

The pluses:
*Serenity House sounds like it does good work for teenage girls (though there is a mention in this book that it is being investigated due to a series of problems with residents and a mix up in supervision) and it sounds like the boys's house Quiet Waters will be similar.
*The dogs (who are a very small part of the story).

The minuses:
*If Nathan truly wanted to leave his wife and be with Annabelle, the correct way to go about it would have been to divorce Olivia before sleeping with Annabelle--before making Annabelle promises that he then found he couldn't keep.
*There's a lot of sexual relations outside of marriage: Annabelle and Nathan (both in the past and the current timelines), Barbara and Nathan, Jon and his ex-girlfriend.
*I didn't find some of Annabelle's choice believable. Certainly she can't be the only female who could be a bodyguard or the only person who could "fit in" unobtrusively. Yes, it might have taken a short while to find someone suitable, and I could see Annabelle perhaps standing in until that happened, but agreeing to it long term . . .
*Rob--exactly how did Annabelle discourage him? When he left to return to Seattle, he was claiming when she returned they'd take up where they'd left off before she left Seattle. Yet, when she returns to Seattle, we don't hear anything more about him or how she convinced him their relationship was over.… (altro)