The Friday 56 hosted by Freda’s Voice.
The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader and find any sentence, or a few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.
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#1
I am on my back, naked, making love with – who?
#2
I inhale the fragrance of my lover, believing that, like an animal, I can intuit his identity by smell alone.
#3
One certainty exists: I love this man.
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The Angel Connection
By Judith Anne Barton
In this romantic thriller, mysterious convergences link two lives separated by 100 years.
In 1996, after her reputation, marriage, career as a TV journalist and relationship with her adult son, Chad, are trashed, Morgan Reed starts over in Milltown, Pa., a village in beautiful Bucks County. She feels drawn there, particularly to the 200-year-old former rectory that she buys. In 1895, Evangeline Laury, minister’s wife and mother to a small boy, feels stifled in provincial Milltown. She misses the cultured life she’d led in Philadelphia and her painting, especially when she learns that a local American impressionist, the charismatic Daniel Duvall, is giving lessons. As Morgan, with the help of her handsome but mercurial neighbor Victor, works on a documentary about 1895 Milltown, she uncovers more spooky parallels between her life and Evangeline’s. Both women, desperate for love and connection, are guiltily caught between competing attractions and responsibilities, whether for a husband, lover, child or work, and both women will experience the tragic death of someone close. In her debut novel, Barton writes lush descriptions of beauty and desire, with interesting historical details, many of which seem borrowed from real-life American impressionist painter Daniel Garber and his Bucks County studio at Cuttalossa Farm. (Black-and-white historical photos in the book go uncredited.) Though the narrative works to account for Morgan’s needy self-pity and Evangeline’s blind desire, readers might feel less sympathy than the writer intends, especially since other characters pay the ultimate price for the women’s culpability. In particular, deeply emotional Evangeline’s self-punishing guilt becomes internal melodrama. When Victor very reasonably objects to involving sullen, hard-drinking Chad on the documentary project, it’s a welcome moment of sensibleness: “It is not my problem to save your son.”
Emotional, doom-tinged and spooky, with two deeply flawed heroines.
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I won this book quite a while ago and after I started reading it I wanted to kick myself for waiting so long. Not what I expected at all and verrrrry interesting!
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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew!
Oh Laura, this is definitely on my TBR!!! You know me and Angels, love it! Lots of love to you and sis, Emily
Happy Valentine’s Day Emily. This is a very interesting book. Something about it keeps me turning the pages way past my bedtime!
Um…. and hot! And intriguing!
Happy weekend & happy Valentines day!
All of that and a great plot too! Happy Valentines to you also Freda!
I’m not sure about this one. I’ll be looking for your review. ^_^
Probably not your cup of tea but you know how that goes. Great wrting hooks you no matter what the genre or plot.
Oh my goodness. VERY intriguing!
It is. Was worried about jumping back and forth in time periods but that actually made the book more intriguing and was easy to follow.
I’m putting this one on my Goodreads Want to Read list!
Linking from Friday 56,
Ricki Jill
I didn’t know how I was going to react to this one but it sure grabbed me. The writing is superb.