This is only the second Everlasting Love series book that I’ve read. I like the fact that this series centers on characters that are in their 40’s and older. I have to say that when I first started this story, one of the main female characters was very hard to like or even get into “her corner” to cheer her on. This story is actually the story of two couples. There is the young couple, Melinda and Nicholas Thompson, whose marriage is coming to an end. Then there is Jack and Esmee who lived through the horrors of World War II to eventually be reunited years after the war ended. Esmee & Jack are Melinda’s grandparents. We learn about the struggles, joys, triumphs, and tragedies experienced by Jack and Esmee through their journals. Melinda has come home to Buffalo, New York two weeks before her divorce will be final. She plans to stay with her grandfather, who lives only a few blocks from the house she shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband, but he tells her to go to her own home and gives her the journals, telling her to read them before she comes back. Melinda seems to be a spoiled woman, used to getting things done when she wants and how she wants it done. Her husband, Nicholas, was a member of the Reserves and sent into Afghanistan after 9/11. She feels that Nicholas betrayed her and the family they want to have in order to serve his country first. She thinks he should have resigned his post so they could start a family, not sign on for a second tour of duty. In my mind she should be applauding her husband and getting behind him 110%. Instead she’s acting like a spoiled child that hasn’t gotten the gift she wanted so she goes off to sulk. In this case, she leaves for a job in Washington D.C. as a Senator’s aide and speech writer. As the story unfolds, you find out why she is behaving as she does and watch as she begins to mature (at 40). Through the journal entries of her grandparents, we also learn how they met and survived Nazi-occupied Belgium and their work with the Resistance movement. We see the horrors of the war and how it ravaged people and countries, sometimes neighbors against neighbors, never sure who can be trusted.
I don’t want to give away too much of the rest of the story, it is one worth reading. It should give everyone a reason to sit down with their own grandparents and ask them about their lives growing up. I hope you do read this book…
Trice
Harlequin Member for years! I love to read!
