Customer Reviews

One Perfect Day: A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Nora Peterson, her husband Gordon and her twin children, Charlie and Christi were just like any other family. They had their arguments but they all loved each other. Nora, Charlie and Christi were preparing for Christmas. Gordon was stranded momentary due to weather. He was heading home from a business trip. The day was December 23. A day that Nora and her family will never forget. As the turn of events that take place this fatal day will change the lives of two families forever.

Jenna Montgomery and her daughter, Heather both knew how precious living every day to the fullest was. You see, Heather has heart problems and has been on the donors list for a while now. A miracle happens and Heather receives a new heart for Christmas.

I felt for both families as they struggled in different ways to get on with their lives.
Lauraine Snelling has one of my favorite Christian authors. She brings a grace and fluidity to her stories. It has been a while since I have read one of her books. I have to say that after reading One Perfect Day I will be starting back up again with her books. She is a master storyteller. Mrs. Snelling's books can be read and enjoyed by anyone. Just because she writes Christian books does not mean that she gets preachy in them. They do teach a lesson but they are lessons that we all can benefit from remembering and using in our everyday lives.

This book is the story of two mothers. One lost her son right before Christmas. The other one's daughter received his heart in a transplant. The chapters alternate, one tells Nora's story, the next, Jenna's. Not unsurprisingly Nora, who lost her son, finds herself distant from God. She is furious at him and drowning in her sorrow. Jenna praises Him for the new life in her daughter.

I guess sorrow is a stronger emotion than joy. If felt Nora's pain much more than I shared Jenna's joy, but I loved the book.

Lauraine Snelling is a consummate and prolific Christian women's author. She delves into emotionally charged situations, producing realistic scenes of grief, mourning, cautious elation, and new hope. Both families struggle to adapt to the momentous changes in their lives as their stories are related in tandem. Nora's descent into unbearable grief is written so strongly that it nearly overpowers the glimpses of praise and refreshment in Jenna's story.

Enveloped in her own despair, Nora sets herself at odds with God, enraged by His taking her son. As the Peterson's struggle to adapt to the loss of their son they must learn to reach out to their remaining child as she sinks deeper into the darkness. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how faint. Conversely the Montgomerys are faced with new independence and a newly birthed spirit of enthusiasm from Jenna. New dreams and desires erupt from the hearts of both mother and daughter. Knowing that a future is possible for Heather opens a realm of previously unexplored possibilities to each of them.

Throughout all of these changes God is present to walk His children through them. Using believers in the lives of these women He uplifts, encourages, and supports them through their respective periods of growth and change - even when it appears that His presence is missing.

The strength of this title is found in the fluctuation of emotions the characters endure. Snelling's depiction of Nora's abrupt slide into a depression seemingly without end throbs with authenticity. Likewise the tentative tendrils of a newly blooming romance are suitably cautious and tender as Jenna begins to open her heart. It is this ring of truth combined with the emotionally dramatic that brings readers back to Snelling's works.

Lauraine Snelling works her literary magic again; this time with the story of two families affected by the same heart. One family donates it after the son dies and the other family receives it. This would be a great book for those affected by organ transplants to read, but it could be a little intense for those same people. You would have to make the choice based on who you're buying it for. Nora, the mother whose son died, grieves so intensely that it's almost annoying, except that you're grieving with her. Jenna, on the other hand, is trying to keep her daughter from moving on with her life too fast. I think this is the best book about people getting an organ transplant that I've ever read, but it definitely is a grief process and a medical process that you go through with the two families. Usually, when you read about, or even live through, the donating or receiving of an organ, you're seeing only the one side. Either you're grieving the loss of someone whose organs have been donated, or you're rejoicing for someone who is getting an organ or organs. In this book, you're living both sides at once, which gives an entirely different perspective to the entire process. I'd give it 10 stars if I could.

Nora wants the perfect Christmas for her family. She looks forward along with her twins Charlie and Christi to the return of her spouse and their father from Germany. However the Riverbend police arrive at Nora's home to inform her a tragedy occurs when Charlie is in a car accident and is in the hospital's ICU only kept alive by a ventilator. His dad, delayed in Germany, rushes home to try to be at the side of his son.

Jenna is a single mother praying for a miracle for her daughter, Heather. If the child fails to get a heart transplant by Christmas she will be dead. A miracle occurs when a heart is found for Heather. Though Jenna rejoices, Nora mourns.

This is a poignant emotional tale of two families connected by the organ transplant. Both families come across as real especially their reactions to what is going on. Besides making a strong plea for the organ donation program, ONE PERFECT DAY points out that for each life saved, someone else mourns the loss of a life. Lauraine Snelling provides a deep inspirational novel.

Harriet Klausner

One Perfect Day is a gripping tale of hope and loss, of sorrow and joy. Most of all it celebrates the gift of love as one family struggles to accept their son's death and allow his organs to give the gift of life to someone else. Snelling's masterfully portrays both sides of the emotion fraught organ donor program. I was not ready for the book to end when I turned the last page. These characters had become friends and I didn't want the friendship to end.

One Perfect Day is the perfect Christmas present for any reader on your list. I give it my highest recommendation; any book that leaves me wanting more is a five-star read.

Snelling's compelling writing brings to life the sorrows and joys of two women.
One Christmas morning, two lives are woven together by a cruel twist of fate.
One woman's heartbreak is another woman's joy.
Nora struggles through her grief, trying to find the joy that seems to have left her behind.
Jenna rejoices in her daughter having a new heart, and the romance that it brings.
But just as things seems to be coming together, Jenna's daughter's heart starts rejecting the new heart.
Will all the pain return?
Nora now has another problem.
She is afraid that her daughter is going to commit suicide.
How can she help her daughter, when she can barely cope herself?

Snelling's writing throughout grabs you, and won't let you go, immersing you in the lives of these two women.
Feeling with them, and rejoicing them.
With humor and even a little romance interwoven, this is a must-read.

I've read many of Lauraine Snelling's books. She is an excellent author. I have loved everything I've read of hers, but One Perfect Day is just fabulous. I didn't realize it but One Perfect Day is a book that happens at Christmas, so it is wonderful I read it in December.
This book is just perfect if you or someone you know has lost a child or one that needs a transplant.
I was quite touched by the depth of feeling and loss that happened in this book, but the love and joy of the Lord will shine through.
I could just imagine how a mother would feel if their child died or needed a transplant to keep living.
The title One Perfect Day was talking about how a woman wanted everything to be so perfect for her family and everything just fell apart when her son was killed, but that same day was horrible for one family, but fantastic for the family looking for a new heart for their daughter.
This is an older book, written in 2008, but so very important and needed everyday.
In this book you find out that everyone needs someone to talk to, someone to be a friend, even when you want left alone, you really can't make it alone. With God and friends you will make it.
I highly recommend this book even though it is an older book. You won't be sorry you read it.

I received my free copy from Sarah Reck at Faith Words/HachetteBookGroup, for my review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255

In parallel, alternating chapters, One Perfect Day follows the lives of these two women as their story unfolds. When tragedy strikes the Peterson's home, the family is left to make a hard decision about organ donation. The story centers much around this decision being made in the core of intense grief, a decision that can very well save others lives.

Nora's story is one of battling grief and loss, as well as struggling with the depression that can follow such tragic events. As she questions everything, her family and her best friend try hard to wrap her in love. How does one go on after something like this happens? How does one get up in the morning? Breath? Forgive? Heal?

Jenna's story follows the miracle side of her daughters new heart. Sure there are opportunities for heart rejection, but now that this big weight is lifted off their lives and the impending thoughts of "their last Christmas together" seems to disappear and as each day shows improvement and healing... it makes room for something else in Jenna's life. Something there was no room for in the fear of losing her daughter....

There is hope.

The two families never meet and I think that is a brilliant choice by author Lauraine Snelling. It would have been easy to pull them together in the end and let them see what they have done for each other... both healing in their own sense of the word. The fact that this is not the case, adds a sense of imbalance as you wonder whether their paths will cross and the result is a good read, without the all too neat ribbon and bow packaging in the end.

I have to admit, I do not read many Christmas related stories due to the overall neatness that seems to be within the pages of such reads. The overall sugary perfect effect leaves me with nothing to ponder on. This was not the case in One Perfect Day. This book left me not only with thoughts on families coping with tragedies the best they know how, but also on the importance of organ donation.

This book is a recommended read this winter as you curl up in a comfy chair and a hot cup of cocoa. A small, quick read that packs a lot of punch within its pages.

Enjoy!

Lauraine Snelling is a Christian Fiction author who with this book, I have now read for the first time. She has a wonderful way with character development. Her story weaves and twists between the two families as smoothly as though she were figure skating.

The book is noteworthy for its emotional intensity. Grief, anxiety, guilt, doubt and depression are painted in blacks and grays on a wide canvas. Admittedly, love, devotion, friendship, loyalty, compassion and faith are also represented but struggle to gain much notice until the very end and even then there is a lingering aftertaste of melancholy about this book.

Snelling is true to her established habit of being meticulously detailed in all her descriptions. She presents dialogue and actions with thought-stream addenda (in italics). She has the skill to insert her readers into every situation to become acquainted with the narrating characters--in this case Nora and Jenna. The events in each of these characters' lives are juxtaposed synchronously in alternating chapters. I was rather disappointed that the two storylines did not consummate sufficiently at the end. (Due to "legal complications"? This being fiction, surely they could have been sidestepped.) If the two families had been able to meet it would have brought this two dimensional tale to a more satisfying third dimensional conclusion. But, overall, this work offers fetching insight into the process of grieving, and of healing, and the vital importance of caring friends, clergy and health care providers during personal crisis.