Sacha T. Y. Fortuné

This book came to me via an ARC program and I chose it because I was in the mood for a unique romance.

The Premise

Kate immigrates to Canada in 1973, in search of a change of pace. She finds that and much more in her new friendship with Dave and his young son. Not usually the one to consider religion as a key factor in her life, she finds a new zeal for faith to steady her and give her purpose as their love blossoms in the off-grid backwoods. But is she willing to give up everything she’s ever known to commit herself to this man and his way of life?

The Pros & Cons

A slow-burn unique Western romance, “Purity Found” follows Kate as she distances herself from a troubled past in Oregon in the U.S.A. and stakes her claim in a rural backwoods community in British Columbia, Canada. A long way from home, she finds herself charmed by the “old-fashioned” slow pace but hardworking life — exemplified in the man she meets who will change her future, whom she describes to her mother as the strongest man she’s ever met, both mentally and physically.

As her friendship with Dave and his son blossoms, the attraction is undeniable, but Dave’s personal history presents a legal barrier as well as — more importantly — a religious and spiritual barrier. However, Kate soon becomes intrigued and inspired by his devotion to his religious beliefs. The emotional struggle leads her to question her own beliefs:

So, if there wasn’t a future for their growing attraction, wouldn’t it be better for her just to pull up stakes and move on before either of them got really hurt? Maybe she wasn’t right for Dave. She didn’t want to convert to Catholicism and pray to Holy Mary on her knees every night. And she failed to speak in tongues after she was baptized, and the Pentecostal people had prayed for her. She didn’t feel she belonged in any church or the community. So, what [was she] doing here?

But in her darkest moments of despair, she finds solace in her new environment that seems to protect her and encourage her to stay the course:

She was needed by him, and he had a purpose for her. She didn’t have to leave. She just had to love. She was a tool, a vessel designed to hold enough love to flow outward to those God cared about. Something big was happening, and she was a huge part of it. God needed her to get it done!

This story was easy to read and fall into the main character’s mind, experiencing every daily struggle as she acclimatized to the weather, the bone-weary work, the warmness of the community, and the new experiences of teaching and caring for children. A willing, good-natured woman, Kate is easy to love as a protagonist, and we see her rise to the occasion many times even when she is not sure that she is capable. I also appreciated the descriptions of the environment, as it was easy to picture the vast nothingness of the outdoors and the quiet, loving, rural community.

The romance is a unique one, as it seems to happen in the background at times, because the “great outdoors” itself becomes its own character, particularly coming down to the end when Dave has to throw himself wholeheartedly into manual labour to get the job done — there’s no time for romance when the stakes are literally life and death. Kate’s relationship to Dave’s son was heartwarming, and at times I enjoyed this even more than the romance!

Conclusion

Overall this was a great, enjoyable read. If there’s anything worth mentioning, I must admit that perhaps I was hoping for a more heightened point of action before the climax, but this may be because it is part of a series and there are still more books to come. I would recommend it to all romance readers, but particularly those who enjoy rural small-town stories, as this would definitely fit the bill. I look forward to reading more about these characters in future books in the series, and would also love to read more by this author.

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This is my fourth book by this author, and in each case she has reached out directly. You can find her other books here:

• Maplewood
• Rue
• Bibliointuitive

The Premise

In the aftermath of an unspeakable tragedy, three women who survived it are still shattered in many ways 20 years later. The youngest, Paige, is now a young woman who stumbles into a relationship with her first love. Can she find a way to escape her past? Homemaker, wife, and mother Marie has never recovered from her loss and grief — is it too late to save her marriage? And finally there’s Julie, a divorced flight attendant who is still fighting to make a difference decades later — a losing mission, but her only way to channel her own grief and guilt over what took place that day. Can these woman each find a way to not only survive, but also thrive in their lives and forgive the past?

The Pros & Cons

This was another amazing read by an author who blew me away with her last novel. Here again, she deals with crippling grief and a tragedy that has forever marked the lives of these women. Each story occurs in the same timeline but almost entirely separately, with very little crossover at the beginning, and then we dive into their individual stories before it culminates in their reunion at the end.

For each woman, living and loving is a challenge. From the divorced Julie who ruined her own relationship after the tragedy she survived, and isn’t sure she can open herself to love again; to the still-married Marie who ignores her husband and family’s needs to wallow in her own grief; to the young and naive Paige who isn’t sure what love is as yet — love at different stages of life is depicted with an honest, raw intensity that keeps you feverishly turning the pages to see how their stories will turn out.

As with all of this author’s books thus far, I came away with an overwhelming sensation of having learnt something. In this case, it’s that regardless of what took place in the past, it’s never too late to heal. It took these characters decades to reach to that point of truly overcoming the past and forging a new way forward, and the wait was worth the while and hugely satisfying.

As it is a five-star-read I struggle to find any hiccups here, but I do remember there was a moment very near the end where a sprinkling of a “steamy” moment for one of the characters seemed unnecessary — though I’m positive many readers would have loved it, LOL! I absolutely loved all the earlier steamy bits that sprung up though — the author writes these very well with such tastefulness and care; it’s just that for me at that stage of the book with just a few pages left to devour, it felt like a bit much. Also, honestly, there is so much here to love in this novel that even as a clean romance, everything would’ve still worked beautifully. Each woman’s story is a fantastic story in its own right, and it only gets better when everything ties together in the end!

Conclusion

This was another well-crafted novel that explores a shocking, rare tragedy and it reverberations decades later, and yet there is so much levity and sweetness at the same time that it makes your heart soar. Again I must mention my favourite thing about this author is that there are no tropes here; no cookie-cutter story whatsoever. Each story of hers is entirely different, so you never know what to expect, and this was another great surprise that wowed me. I absolutely loved it, and look forward to the next one!

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This book came to me via an ARC program and I chose it because it sounded intriguing.

The Premise

A man in his late twenties feels like he has lost his way, and travels to South America in search of his life’s purpose through the use of powerful psychedelic plants at ayahuasca centres. His experience makes him question everything about himself as he searches for a meaningful existence.

The Pros & Cons

The feeling of “loss of self” is one we may have all felt at some time, and this is the sentiment that drives this novel. Nick, a 27-year-old Australian man, feels like he is all over the place — leaving a job as a high school teacher (unsure he’ll return); at the tail end of a relationship he ruined; still reeling from the reverberations of the breakdown of his family since his parents’ divorce; and with a general sense of “I-don’t-know-what’s-next-for-me.”

Having had some experience with psychedelic drugs, he believes that this may be the answer for him, and he travels to South America to seek a spiritual, mystical experience through a series of ayahuasca ceremonies at different retreat centres. As he says to a woman he meets:

I just sense that ayahuasca is the key to sorting me out… There’s something wrong with me but I don’t know what it is. I feel like I’ve lost something from when I was a child. I can’t really connect with anything. And I feel there’s this big, golden ball of power inside me, waiting to be unleashed into the world. I just have to figure out how to do it.

The novel unfolds describing his experiences on his own, with his friends who share part of the journey with him, with women he meets, and with passersby that he connects with on his journey throughout South America as he moves from one retreat centre to the next.

The author is extremely talented at description, taking you right there to the scene — you can almost feel the heat in the air, the pollution and pungent smells of the area, the meagre accommodations and environments at the centres, and so much more. Every ceremony is described in such detail that it captures both the typical general knowledge of these types of spiritual retreats, but we are also seeing it through Nick’s eyes with a certain level of skepticism, which adds to the overall feeling of realism as he reflects on the experience.

There is a sense of adventure as we follow Nick’s travels, but also we connect to his inner thoughts which are in constant battle to understand himself and the world around him, to tap into that mysterious meaning of life:

Nicholas. Nicky. Nicko. Nick. How many different people am I trying to be? I’ve been leading so many lives, playing so many roles, that I’ve forgotten who I actually am. Who is the person under all the layers? […] What do I care about? What do I live for? Why do I even bother getting up in the morning? I know there’s a reason. Even if it isn’t immediately clear. I know there’s something more to this life. […] I know that it’s there, the great… ‘it’. But what is ‘it’? I don’t know yet. But I’m close.

There were many moments where a poignant or memorable viewpoint was conveyed, such as our tendency to obsess with social media just to say we’ve had an experience because we get social validation from being “witnessed” doing something, whether or not we get validation from the experience itself; another was his reflection that you need to be whole and complete in yourself, else you will only attract other damaged and incomplete people.

While I enjoyed the novel, I do wish to warn other readers that the descriptions of bodily fluids are constant and visceral throughout (at times perhaps even gratuitous!), so bear this in mind if this factor isn’t to your liking. Also, the novel’s structure focuses on an experiential description rather than a linear action-driven plot, so don’t expect a typical plot arc or shocking twist — I myself was kind of “waiting for something to happen” but eventually realised that that wasn’t the point; the journey was more important than the destination!

Conclusion

Overall, it is an engaging story that makes you want to keep on reading because as readers we are transported to a startling experience most of us have never had, along with a refreshingly honest point of view from a young man. I did see many similarities with the novel/film “Into The Wild” (and there’s some intertextuality when the author mentions this title in passing through a comment from one of Nick’s friends); this novel captures the same combination of a sense of adventure, and flawed masculinity fighting to overcome the depths of depression and self-doubt. I would recommend this particularly to male readers who identify as millennials, as I feel this would resonate particularly with them.

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This book came to me via an ARC program and it sounded intriguing — I’d never thought of the correlation between politics and the dating scene in such a way!

The Premise

This non-fiction book examines the influence of the U.S.A.’s president 45th president, Donald Trump, on the divisive “loveless age” whereby marriage rates fell, women’s rights were impacted, and the very fabric of our society became fractured. From racism to misogyny to patriotism and the erratic highs and lows of unchecked power, it examines gender dynamics and mating conventions that form part of Trump’s contentious legacy.

The Pros & Cons

Never before has politics influenced our love lives this intimately. As Donald Trump climbed into power, Trumpism swept over the U.S.A. and swiftly divided the population. From the blatant misogyny to intellectual incompetence to questionable practices that plague his character as a leader, his candidacy began as a joke to many — until his win suddenly became no laughing matter.

This book is unique in its exploration of “mating politics” that bleeds into everything else in our society — as the author reminds us, romance and marriage are the “conduit to family formation, the bedrock of society.”

Trump’s legacy was one of divisiveness in many arenas, and this is an important factor that isn’t often considered by historians. But as the author states:

“When politics interferes with love, you sense the country is too painfully divided.”

The wave of Trumpism saw politics becoming personal. Dating apps even used Trump-related questions in compatibility surveys, and profiles often clearly indicated a political stance — for instance, women anticipated that their career prospects would be slim under a Trump presidency, and avoided dating his supporters with profile statements like “No Trumpers please.” As one dating site stated: “It’s truly unprecedented the change in how people are using politics as a signal in dating, a reflection of the polarization under Trump and the rage of his detractors—particularly women.”

Packed with factual research, the book deep-dives into Trump from the ground up: the making of the man; the people who supported his rise to power despite blusters along the campaign trail that included mocking a disabled reporter and a distinguished Vietnam POW, and the infamous “grabbing women by the pussy” debacle. It is highlighted that women put Trump in power, voting not only for the misogynistic bully but also against the perceived brand of feminism that Hillary Clinton represented because, as one woman termed it: “I simply prefer the leadership of a strong male.”

The author posits the uncomfortable truth:

Did (white) women really vote for the least qualified candidate in U.S. history—a billionaire from the plutocracy class pretending to be a populist (a pluto-populist)—or were they voting against a “snobocrat” class, an elite feminism pretending to be populist for ordinary women?

The book points out Trump’s political failings: a fast-churning White House staff plagued with frequent resignations, racking up trillions in national debt, numerous proven false claims (over 30,500 over 4 years!), his poor handling of the Coronavirus pandemic, looting the taxpayer purse in record defense/border wall spending, spitefully repealing all of Obama’s achievements — including the virus unit whose purpose was to address global pandemics, and many more. He also demonstrated blatant white nationalism and racism, and his gender beliefs were telling: there were only 4 women initially appointed out of 24 Cabinet positions.

The author reiterates that Trump’s “diehard traditionalism” of “making America great again” hinged on America’s golden age of patriarchal glory, when “women and minorities knew their place and power was preserved for white men.”

It is a sobering thought that tens of millions of people put Trump into power, and despite all his failings, years later he still has so many followers who support him unfailingly — so much so, that he was able to incite thousands of people to attack the Capitol Building to prevent a peaceful transfer of power to Biden.

From his own government to the laws he created or beliefs he supported, Trump’s legacy is his control of the cultural narrative as he recreated the U.S.A. in his own image — and that image is a frightening reality that we have yet to truly escape.

Conclusion

This non-fiction book is a lot to unpack, and blends a wide range of sources throughout almost every sentence. Well researched and put together, it is a tell-all tale that gives a much deeper perspective than the average person’s media consumption may provide. It covers all the intricacies of contemporary news and current affairs relating to Trump and the reverberations in society that emerged as a result of his influence. Note: it is a “heavy” read, and provides a thoroughly comprehensive overview; you will need to take your time with it to fully appreciate the amount of work compiled into this. It was very educational and analytical, and I learnt a lot that will stay with me. I highly recommend to other adult readers who want to be politically enlightened.

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