An emotionally evocative portrait of mid-life love complicated by blended family dynamics.
Debbie Macomber is never afraid to tackle hot-button contemporary issues. In It's Better This Way, she delivers a highly charged story that packs an emotional wallop, centered on the aftermath of breakups and a middle-aged romance that faces opposition from their two complicated families.
This tightly woven story is bound by many threads. After
31 years of marriage, Julia Jones's golf-pro husband, Eddie, left her for
another woman. Julia is finally ready, after six months of readjustment and
transition, to embark on a new chapter in her life. She sells the family home
and her design business and then moves into the Heritage, an upscale building
in downtown Seattle, Wash. Her supportive adult daughters, Hillary and
Marie--furious with their father, his choices and the hurtfulness of his
actions--cheer her on. When Julia starts working out in the exercise room at
the Heritage, she meets Heath, a divorced hedge-fund manager and father of two
sons, Adam and Michael, close in age to Julia's girls. When Julia and Heath
strike up a friendship that slowly begins to heat up into something more, their
respective children become leery and try to quash the middle-aged couple's
chance at forging new love.
Macomber (A Walk Along the Beach; Window on the Bay) has a firm grasp on issues that
will resonate with readers of domestic fiction. Well-drawn characters and
plotting--coupled with strong romantic subplots and striking coincidences--will
keep readers rooting for forgiveness, hope and true love to conquer all.
It’s
Better This Way by Debbie Macomber
Ballantine Books
(Random House),
$27.00, hardcover, 9781984818782, 320 pages
Publication
Date: July 27, 2021
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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission
of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 13, 2021), link HERE