This book came to me via a book club. I chose it because I had read and enjoyed another by the same author, “A Heart Life“.

The Premise

Eager to escape her controlling and abusive husband, Stella flees with her teenage twins to Monarch Bay, where her sister lives. With Katrina’s kindness to open her home to her estranged sister, Stella soon finds her footing in her new environment. She is pleased to see her children adjusting to their new lives, and glad that she wrenched them away from Robert in time before they became tainted by his abuse. A new friendship with her employer David soon sparks into something more, and Stella finally receives the love and affection she has longed for all through her abusive marriage. Just when it seems that her new life is shimmering ahead of her, Robert reenters to ruin everything. Can Stella and her children escape his reign of terror and have the future they all deserve?

The Pros

This was a swift, fast-paced read. It was easy to get into the mind of the main character Stella, and feel her pain and trauma of surviving domestic abuse. Her husband Robert was horrible on so many levels, and we quickly connect with her.

Her children also supported her whole-heartedly, which was refreshing to see as I expected they would have been more reticent to leave their friends behind. Her sister also welcomed her fully even though they had been estranged for over a decade. I was glad to see Stella’s family members support her to such an extent, and I really enjoyed the aspects of her character where we see her personality bursting through — chatting with the truck driver, volunteering at the bakery, offering to be a surrogate for her sister, and connecting with others in the community. Despite Robert’s attempts to break her, she was still her own person — this was something worth celebrating.

With such an admirable main character, this novel was interesting to read and hard to put down as we follow Stella’s journey to not just escape abuse but to survive and thrive.

The Cons

I enjoyed this novel, but for me personally, the pacing didn’t give a chance to warm up to things. The teenagers tell everything to their mom so quickly, the sisters make up swiftly after a falling out, even the romantic pair blurt out exactly what’s on their minds without much time in between to build the tension — overall, it didn’t leave a lot to the imagination, and it felt like it was racing to a finish line to get the story out. I also felt like, for a battered woman, Stella didn’t try hard to cover her tracks — I was actually surprised Robert didn’t find her sooner! I was also hoping for a bit more of a twist to make it substantially different from other domestic abuse plots, but it wound up nicely into a predictable (though satisfying) conclusion.

Conclusion

Despite my own ambivalence on a few plot points, this was a good story overall and it will resonate with many women. There is a positive message interlaced throughout, and happiness beyond the trauma that the main character survives — and also happiness for side characters as well, who also endure their own difficult journeys. I would recommend to other readers, and I would like to read other books by this author as this was the second one that I enjoyed.

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