Christine Bell (1)

Lily Declan is grieving. It’s approaching the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death. The anxiety and torment resulting from accompanying him through chemotherapy and his long wasting away have been replaced by the disorientation, pain, anger, depression, and hypersensitivity of grief. It’s a time when many others think you should have gotten over it by now. It’s also a time when a rude stranger hitting your car in a parking lot can send you into an angry rage. These are common experiences for the bereaved, but Lily has an additional concern, she’s been receiving unwanted and unexpected gifts from someone, that are both benign and bizarre: a valentine from someone claiming to be one of her husband’s former girlfriends, an anonymous gift of a sexy nightgown, a free landscaping job and house cleaning including a rearrangement of her furniture.

Bell’s portrait of grief and the setting of her novel in middle Tennessee are vividly accurate, and the book’s nail-biting, page-turning conclusion kept this reader wide-awake until midnight. Five stars for both accuracy and thrills!… (mer)

It's a shame I waited almost twenty years to read this book. It was a delightful read that delivered the serious realities of the Mariel Boatlift in a way that I could manage without feeling depressed, and yet in no way undervalued the struggles and emotions of the people leaving Cuba in such tense circumstances. All of the characters were 'real' to me, it only took a couple of pages for me to be caught up in the story, and I enjoyed getting to laugh out loud more than once as things began coming together.

The ending had a bittersweetness to it, but it was the right ending, and the sweet was much stronger than the bitter. I was thoroughly satisfied with this book and will probably read it again in the future.… (mer)