Revell (September 1, 2011)
Receiving this review copy was a bittersweet day for me. Knowing I have to wait till next year for the next O’Connor book and that the next O’Connor book will be the last for now are unpleasant thoughts for me as I have come to love them so much. However the thought of another O’Connor saga to read is always a cheerful one so when that package from Revell arrived and I saw Julie’s name staring at me from the open envelope I knew I was in for a treat.
Once I opened the cover those hopes were not disappointed. Lizzie does remain my favorite heroine. Emma however much she is a sweetheart and won Sean over somehow doesn’t speak to me in the ways that Lizzie did. Perhaps it is that Lizzie has a more intellectual bookwormish personality that fits closer with mine. Not to say however that I didn’t love the book as I have all the O’Connor books both Daughters of Boston and Winds of Change so far. Despite running from Dublin and her abusive, cheating, so-called husband, Emma has lived in Boston as if she were married to him all these years despite the two being an ocean apart literally. Eventually the lout shows up in Boston claiming to have changed and Emma actually believes he’s turned over a new leaf despite all evidence she’s seen to the contrary over the years. A liar, cheat, drunk, and wife-beater saying he’s gotten religion and gone sober and stopped all the other stuff flat out but she really truly wants to believe he has changed. So badly in fact that she almost won’t believe that he has gone right back to his old ways shortly after he shows up in Boston. Yet she is also so ashamed of falling for his tricks so long ago that she wants to find a way around admitting to her part in the truths he has revealed to Steven during an arrest when he was drunk and loose lipped. (You’ll have to read the book to find out the drunken revelations of Emma’s estranged husband to her best-friend’s brother/prohibition agent.) I am looking forward to the next and unfortunately for the time being final installment in the O’Connor saga, Steven’s story to come in 2012. (ISBN#9780800734169, 505pp, $14.99)
Codicil:
Visit Julie’s website. Click the cover for more info and to purchase a copy. Read an excerpt. Thanks to Revell for a review copy.
I just wanted to add that if you’ve never read any of Julie Lessman’s other books – YOU NEED TO!!! She is HANDS DOWN my favorite author, and she once again has written a book chock full of love, humor, passion, and story, story, story!!
This is the 5th book sharing the lives of the very Irish O’Connor family (The Daughters of Boston series is the 1st three, and the Winds of Change series continues where the Daughters of Boston left off), and I just absolutely LOVE how Julie incorporates SO MUCH the lives of the characters we have grown to love from her previous books! So by the time you get to this book – A Heart Revealed – you already know and LOVE Sean and Emma before even starting the book!
This one is a bit different than all of Julie’s other books – because Emma is married, there isn’t the heated romantic passion right off the bat and then all throughout the book (which is kinda Julie’s “thing” in all of her other books.) Sean and Emma’s story shows their love blooming through friendship, but don’t worry – she still gives us plenty of her trademark passion and drama through Luke and Katie and Mitch and Charity!! And don’t worry – things will definitely heat up for Sean and Emma too, so don’t lose heart!! 🙂
The book is also full of the regular “Julie Lessman” roller coaster-like ups and downs and then of course back up again…with of course a surprise or two thrown in!! I promise – this one will be one for the KEEPER shelf – along with ALL of her other ones!! A definite must read!