Synopsis
Sweet tea, corn bread, and soup beans—everyday fare for eight-year-old Alix French, the precocious darling of a respected southern family. But nothing was ordinary about the day she met ten-year-old Nick Anderson, a boy from the wrong side of town. Armed with only a tin of bee balm and steely determination, Alix treats the raw evidence of a recent beating that mars his back, an act that changes both of their lives forever.
Through childhood disasters and teenage woes they cling together as friendship turns to love. The future looks rosy until the fateful night when Frank Anderson, Nick's abusive father, is shot to death in his filthy trailer.
Suddenly, Nick is gone—leaving Alix alone, confused and pregnant. For the next fifteen years she wrestles with the pain of Nick's abandonment, a bad marriage, her family and friends. But finally, she's starting to get her life back together. Her divorce is almost final, her business is booming, and she's content if not happy—until the day she looks up and sees Nick standing across the counter. He's back…and he's not alone.
Once again Alix is plunged into turmoil and pain as Nick tries to win her love, something she resists with all her strength. Only one thing might break the protective wall she's built around her emotions—the truth about Frank Anderson's death. But when that truth comes out and those walls crumble, neither Alix nor Nick is prepared for the emotional explosion that could destroy as well as heal.
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My Review
My Review
3.5-4 Intense Stars!
Wow it's been a while since I've wrote a review and a while since I've read anything but I've had this book on my list for ages and decided to get around to it. I loved the first book I read by Katherine Allred called What Price Paradise. It was right up my street and I couldn't stop reading it from start to finish it flowed and kept me captured to the end.
“You can’t turn love on and off like a light switch, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wall it off, one brick at a time, until you’ve created an impenetrable fortress around your emotions. And once that fortress is built, you camouflage it so well that even you can’t see it anymore.”
This was a truly intense book with beautiful aspects to it and it made my heart hurt, made me want to stop so many things that happened and change things and make this book longer with more happier parts! Not that it was all doom and gloom it's just that a lot of the happy parts you ended up remembering and instead of feeling light and happy, they just broke your heart a little bit more.
I hated the separation aspect of this book I really wanted things to get better a lot sooner in the book and not so many years along.Both characters where too young when things started to go bad,they were confused and Nick had more problems than a boy that age should have. He made a choice that okay fine he made that choice but all these years? why couldn't he come back earlier?
“No one should have to go through life with only half a heart”.
Overall I enjoyed this book and I'm glad it got me back into reading.Also hope to read more books by this author!
