August Wrap-Up

A lot of different genres made up the August reading list. I loved every minute of it. :) The Clock of Life had to be my favorite! It made it on the 5/5 Cups list after all. 

Morning Light

Emily, a twenty-four-year-old dancer and choreographer, confronts her husband's fixation with right-wing Catholic dogma that condemns her use of birth control. His faith is so powerful that he refuses to have sex with her, even though he desperately wants to. As awful as this broken faith feels, she is troubled more by her best friend's losing fight with cancer, and seeks to help her friend's grief-stricken, precocious, son-the seventeen-year-old David.

But the boy's willful ways turn the tables on her. Denied intimacy by her husband, the boy's passion asserts itself, and everyone's life is explosively altered. Twenty years later, the successful David, a theater director, gets his hands on Emily's secret journals and uncovers her covert emotional life, revealing family secrets unknown to him, and discovering prickly truths about himself.

Part literary memoir, part poignant psychological drama, this haunting love story explores the secrets of attraction and the mysteries of obsession-a boy's coming-of-age, and one woman's search for love and success in a year of intense achievement and painful loss.

*May Contain Spoilers*

Morning Light by Holland Kane is an unexpected religious romance full of discovery, doubt, and deep secrets. David tells the story as an outsider, twenty years after it happened, though he plays a large part in the plot. When Emily, the main character, gives David her journals from the past, he shares them with the reader, adding insight and details from his point of view. 

Emily is a hopeful dancer who lets infatuation and love carry her through life. She's completely in love with her husband, but when he removes sexuality from their marriage it condemns Emily to searching for physical love with David, a seventeen year old. Though Emily isn't open in life - she's in fact very secretive - she's open with readers. As David shares her journal entries, readers become members of Emily's inner mind. Readers will connect with her through empathy and understanding. As a young woman, she yearns for life lasting love. 

The novel is set up as a memoir, though it's easy to forget while reading that the narrator is looking back while telling the story. Readers follow Emily through a year that held her defining moments. She becomes pregnant, her dance/choreography career takes off, all while trying to hold her marriage together. Though religion plays a huge role in the story line, it isn't overwhelming. It's a common thread throughout that holds the pieces and players together. When the weight of the characters become to much, the thread snaps and the story crumbles into chaos. 

Morning Light is a hindsight novel where the worst outcome is always on the horizon. A ploy of Murphy's law that will leave readers feeling inept. 

Rating: 3/5 Cups

WWW Wednesday (65)

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

    

01. Currently Reading:
Morning Light by Holland Kane. David follows the journals of a woman he was once in love with while re-living what happened when he was a teenager.

02. Recently Finished:
Dancing With the Duke by Suzanna Medeiros. A romance novella that kept my interest but would have been better as a full length novel so readers could witness the character evolution better.

03. Reading Next:
Canvas Bound by Laura Kolar. Blog Tour coming up next week for this new novel about an artist whose paintings come alive.

Teaser Tuesday (76)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Morning Light (Kindle Loc. 1070-71)
   - Holland Kane

His words of condolence were warm but she hung up dissatisfied. Mourning, like love, was a personal thing with a depth and a height and a weight no one can measure for you.

WWW Wednesday (64)

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

      

01. Currently Reading:
Dancing with the Duke by Suzanna Medeiros. Romance novella about two childhood friends falling in love when they see each other for the first time in seven years.

02. Recently Finished:
The Clock of Life by Nancy Klann-Moren. Historical novel about an unexpected friendship that takes place in the South during the time of segregation.

03. Reading Next:
Morning Light by Holland Kane. When a married woman has an affair with a friend's 17-year-old son, there are drastic consequences.