4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Can she overcome the past for the sake of her future?, May 14, 2004
This review is from: Abiding Love (Laurel Glen Series #6) (Love Inspired #252) (Mass Market Paperback)
Alexandra Lexington had come back to her hometown of Laurel Glen fleeing from her abusive husband with barely enough money for a meal. The only person willing to take her in was Elizabeth Boyer, the woman her brother had raped years before. When Beth took Xandra in, Xandra's life changed forever. She was slowly able to rebuild her broken life, thanks to the helpful people at her church and a lot of prayer. Now divorced, Xandra worked as a high school guidance counsellor. When she meets Beth's nephew, Mark, she is determined to help him form a close relationship with his father, Adam.
Adam Boyer is immediately distrustful of Xandra because she was the sister of the man who had terrorized his sister. He soon begins to realize, however, that Xandra may be the only person who could help his teenaged son become close to him. Adam had quit the Navy SEALs to become the full-time father Mark needed after his mother's death, but Mark seemed to despise him. Before he knows it, Adam begins to develop feelings for the mysterious Xandra, despite the fact that she seems to be distrustful of him. Can they form a relationship despite their troubled pasts?
If I could give this book 4.5 stars, I would. Xandra and Adam were both believable characters who seemed like regular people caught in a mire of emotions that many people have to address sometime in their lives. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars was the tendency to either overdevelop sub-plots at the expense of the romance, or to introduce subplots without developing them much. Other than that, this book was just about as good as you can get for this genre. There was enough spiritual talk to mark it as a Christian book, but not enough to make the less spiritually-inclined too uncomfortable.
The best part of this book, in my opinion, was the fact that the author dealt with the sticky situation of divorce. Adam was divorced but his ex-wife had died, but Xandra's abusive ex-husband was still living. I really liked how the fictional pastor was so loving and not judgmental about Xandra being divorced. Having grown up in a church were divorce was akin to apostasy, I was really glad to see such a loving response to Xandra's obvious emotional and spiritual distress over her divorce. The letter to the readers at the end of the book from the author is also wonderfully supportive. That was so refreshing to me.
Altogether, I highly recommend this book for anyone, whether you are Christian or not, who enjoys a clean read that actually deals with real-life struggles. This book was not "fluffy" like so many romance novels tend to be - and I liked that. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author, and I'm also looking forward to reading books she has already written about the other residents of Laurel Glen (particularly the story of Elizabeth Boyer and Jack Alton).
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4.0 out of 5 stars
LET GO, September 4, 2011
Alexandra is learning a lesson we have to face and let it go. So you yourself can be free!!! One lesson is that you can pick who your family is but you can chose if you want to follower their paths. The other is that you can't always judge someone by what one person has done to you, everyone is different. I can related this to my own life.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Abiding Love, October 26, 2008
This review is from: Abiding Love (Laurel Glen Series #6) (Love Inspired #252) (Mass Market Paperback)
I thoroughly enjoyed Abiding Love and wish there would be more in the series. They were/are all great.
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