Customer Reviews

Reunion: A Novel

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Nineteen year-old Harmony Blue Kucharski is single, alone, and pregnant. She opts to put her son up for adoption. She had a difficult childhood and only wants the best for her son.


Twenty years later: Blue Reynolds is a very successful Chicago-based talk show hostess. She has everything that money can buy, everything but happiness. During the taping of a teen pregnancy show, Blue loses herself and begins to defend a young pregnant teen that is a guest of the show. Blue realizes what she's missing in her life: knowing what happened to her son. She hires a private investigator to find the location and name of her son's adoptive parents. He finds the location of the daughter of her midwife, and begins sending her money in return for her medical file.

While taping an episode of The Blue Reynold's Show in Key West, Blue is reunited with Mitch Forrestor, her former English Professor. They had a relationship twenty years ago, and the dissolution of this relationship is what caused blue (then Harmony Blue) to rebound and find herself pregnant. Is this reunion Fate's way of telling her to fight to regain everything she lost those decades ago?

When Blue decides to help Mitch produce his literary documentary, Literary Lions, Blue meets his thirty-something son, Julian. Julian puts a bit of a kink in Mitch and Blue's potential relationship.

When her past is revealed, Blue must quickly decide just how much she is willing to relinquish in order to find true happiness. Reunion tells a a story that pulled me in during the first few pages. Blue's character is a strong and honest one. One can't help but feel for her and everything she was forced to experience in life. The secondary characters are extremely well-developed as well and serve as a backbone to the storyline. All of the characters are human, they have natural faults real challenges they are forced to address. The tale that Reunion portrays is a powerful one. Fowler's writing paints the setting of Key West as if it were a painting that is being unveiled before our eyes. The imagery and detail pulls the reader into the story. I felt the sun beating on my face, smelled the warm ocean breeze. The ending leaves me begging for a sequel so I can follow the characters on their journey of rediscovery

Reunion is the perfect book to take along with you to the beach, or in my case, to read on a rainy day.

The Chicago base for Blue and her talk show was a bit distracting because of the strong resemblance to Oprah's home base. Given the fact that Chicago didn't play a major role in the story overall Blue's childhood and subsequent career could have been set in any large city and worked just as well. In fact, the only point of geography that played a significant role in the story was Key West and in this case it was wonderfully portrayed and valuable to the progression of the story.

Furthermore, the main reason Blue was hiding the secret birth and child she'd given up should have been given more focus. Small references were made several times but it seemed minimally significant, more an afterthought than an actual expansion of the overall plot. To make the secret and it's later fall out more believable it should have had more prominence throughout the story.

What I loved about this story is Fowler's ability to build great characters. She does a fabulous job crawling into their minds then depicting it to the reader. Major players (Blue, Mitch, Julian) each have his/her own in depth back-story that intrigues enough to stand alone, yet they are intricately intertwined together in subtle places so subsequent relationships are all the more believable. of the story were well written with realism and focus to detail. Each character's motivations and the interaction with his/her respective partner generated feelings of compassion, longing, and hope.

In the end, the beauty of this story lies in the strong relationships built. Not only does Fowler focus attention on numerous romantic entanglements, but also the strain of distant family relationships, the love parents have for their children, and the effects one's professional choices have on their personal lives.

Reunion opens with a flashback: Harmony Blue Kucharski finds herself, at 19, unmarried and about to give birth to a baby she gives up for adoption, a decision that will haunt her for the next 20-odd years, despite her rise to celebrity as a television talk-show host.

After giving her son up for adoption and repackaging herself as Blue Reynolds, her persistence and hard work pay off with a successful career as a talk show host. Blue's regrets and need to know what became of her son ultimately lead her to discovering who she really is and what really matters in life.

This book was such a terrfic vehicle to usher in the summer! Reading Reunion put me in the mood for sandy beaches and vacation. The exposition is mainly Chicago and Key West, but references to the Middle East are also peppered through the novel.

Fowler's writing was descriptive and the imagery made Key West come to life for me-so much so that I'm planning to visit in the fall. Additionally, the use of bird imagery brought to mind freedom-especially when one character mentions that macaws are sometimes set free in Key West. To me it was a symbolic parallel of Blue being set free from her cage (celebrity lifestyle, painful past) after impulsively buying a home in Key West.

The title Reunion is so apt-Blue not only reunites with an old flame, but also with an old mentor and his wife, her sister, mother, and most importantly, Blue reunites with herself-Harmony Blue. While reuniting with her 19-year-old self, she finally forgives the decisions she made in the past. With that forgiveness comes her ability to open herself to love and be loved, to live and enjoy life, which she does with abandon.

Therese Fowler's Reunion: A Novel examines the secrets many of us carry and how they can direct our lives and decisions. While some could consider this a light read, it deals with a number of deep issues, including teen pregnancy.

Harmony Blue Kucharski/Reynolds is a young girl with a deep crush on a junior professor and son to her boss, Mitch Forrester. After a whirlwind romance, Mitch breaks her young heart, and she embarks on a destructive path that ultimately leads her to a decision that must be kept secret after her career begins to take off. Two decades later, fate brings them back together in Key West, Florida, and Blue helps Mitch with his pet video project about writer's like Hemingway.

Blue is a complex character floundering in her decisions and striving to find true happiness, and Mitch has tried all kinds of happiness, but has been unable to patch things up with his only son. Blue's mother, Nancy, is an aging hippie still looking for love, and her sister has found a family life she can be proud of, though she still seems to have a hard time dealing with her sister's success as TV personality--much like Oprah in Chicago.

Fowler's writing is down-to-Earth and captivating. The characters pop from the page. While there are multiple story lines in Reunion: A Novel, Fowler weaves them well and transitions seamlessly between them. Although this book could be considered chicklit or women's fiction, there is much more beneath the surface; all readers have to do is scratch the surface.

As she nears forty, Chicago based talk show host Blue Reynolds knows she has come a long way from when she was the impoverished Harmony Blue Kucharski. However, she has kept one secret that she hid from her mom and sister that has left her filled with remorse. When she was nineteen she loved English Professor Mitch Forrester but he rejected her advances. On a rebound fling she got pregnant. She could not raise the child nor tell her family and abortion was not an option at least for her; so she arranged through her midwife to have her baby adopted in what was probably an illegal deal. Filled with regret, she hires a private investigator to find her son although her career and reputation will probably be trashed.

On location in Key West taping her show, Blue and Mitch meet on his show Literary Lions. They still desire one another, but his thirtyish year old son international reporter Julian objects. However Julian is confused though he does not hide his scorn for his dad's celebrity floozy; Julian is unsure whether he objects because she is closer to his age than that of his dad or because he wants her.

REUNION is an engaging family drama as the past resurfaces because people in the present remember the great, the bad and the ugly times. The key triangle seems real as all three involved have flaws and remorse while the support cast like her family and his grandparents enhance the plot. As each of the trio learns, with love a person can do just about anything.

Harriet Klausner

Reunion has held my attention from the beginning, which is not always easy to do. I will put down a book by chapter 3 if I can't embrace the characters and plot. There must be elements of reality interspersed with enough whimsy or fiction, to remind me I am reallly reading a novel.

Blue is the focal point of the book, yet her supporting characters do provide good insight and background. She is living a life that is not true to her nature and she does not know how to change. The ironic element is her television role, where she has an image of perfection. Many of us face similar contradictions each day, just not on the level portrayed in the story. So the reader can relate to Blue and mistakes made when young, decisions that can alter the direction of one's life.

I would have liked more attention paid to the relationship between Blue and her sister Melody, as well as with her personal assistant Marcy. Tensions and loyalties are probed on a superficial level. For example, how did Marcy get her role as Blue's assistant? What does Melody want from her sister and how can the two finally find peace? Maybe a sequel will answer these questions and others.

REUNION is a beach read with bite, a story about the choices we make, the consequences we must live with, and the second chances we all need.

I loved the beautifully evoked settings--North Carolina, Key West, even Iraq--and the plot twists that made the story anything but predictable. Mostly, I loved the characters: two yummy men, an academic administrator with heart and cleavage, the aging hippie mother who discovers true love, and, of course, the heroine: Blue Reynolds.

From the moment I met Blue, the talk show host who catches snowflakes on her tongue and walks barefoot through the streets of Key West, I fell into her story and didn't want to leave. Despite the bizarre world in which she lives, Blue is down-to-earth--bemused by the celebrity and wealth that have isolated her from at least one person she loves. I desperately wanted her to find her happy-ever-after!

While REUNION is very different to SOUVENIR, Ms Fowler's first novel, I think it will appeal to fans of her writing and her characters. This is one fan who can't wait for novel three!

Once upon a time, a young girl named Harmony Blue Kucharski had big dreams. Despite all the evidence to the contrary - an unsettled childhood and adolescence only the least of it - she was a most unlikely candidate for the destiny she imagined for herself.

Fast forward more than twenty years to the confident, popular talk-show host of "The Blue Reynolds Show" in Chicago, and discover that some dreams do come true after all.

But what did that little girl Harmony Blue have to do to spin these dreams into reality? And what did she have to turn away from to make her fantasies come true?

A secret lurks within - something discarded, along with the old Harmony Blue in that long ago time - but Blue Reynolds is determined to find someone she lost. Two "someones," in fact. The lover who left her all those years ago, and the baby she had to give up for adoption.

On the way to opening up this Pandora's Box, Blue will unleash a host of unexpected events, all beginning when The Blue Reynolds Show goes on location to Key West, Florida, where her former lover's parents reside. There she comes face to face with Mitch Forrester, who is unexpectedly visiting his parents Dan and Lynn Forrester, and Mitch's thirty-something grown son Julian.

Blue then learns that while dreams may come true, some things in life can be better and more unexpected than the greatest fantasies. But what price will she have to pay to transform pain and regrets into promises and second chances?

Therese Fowler's Reunion: A Novel is an evocative, dramatic and sensitive exploration of finding love in the most serendipitous places.

Laurel-Rain Snow
Author of: Web of Tyranny, etc.

I really was excited to read this book based on the review's posted here on Amazon. While this is an easy read, I really did not care about any of the characters. Blue (the white Oprah Winfrey) did little to make me feel for her or really care about her. The whole story was flat for me. It may interest others but the prose has been done before and the writing was not all that captivating. If you just want an o.k. beach read this is for you.

Blue Reynolds is now a wealthy, famous celebrity talk show host, but things were different for her when she was a very young woman. Blue's upbringing had been catch-as-catch-can with her hippie-dippy single mom and sister. It was all about survival, and so she was particularly happy when her high school English teacher found her a job in his wife's office. There, Blue had fallen for the teacher and his wife's son, Mitch. Mitch had been slightly older, divorced and with a little boy.

Mitch and Blue were a couple for a brief and ecstatic period in the girl's life. But when Mitch broke off the relationship, Blue was crushed. She moved in with a friend, and attempted to lose herself in the free love and drugs available in their household. Unfortunately, Blue found herself pregnant from a casual encounter with someone she didn't care about and completely without prospects. Believing her newborn son would have a better home with a wealthy couple, Blue let him be adopted by them.

Fast forward to Blue today. As she interviews a pregnant teen on her program, Blue breaks down crying, much to the consternation of her avid public. Blue has secretly hired a private detective who is searching for the midwife who delivered her son and had also functioned as the middleman in the adoption process. Meanwhile, she tries to tell herself she has a good life. After all, she is worth millions, enjoys her work and lives in a fabulous apartment. Her very good friend is her assistant. Although she has to worry about being in the public eye (and fears terribly any scandal that could arise if word got out about her child) and has drifted away from the closeness she once enjoyed with her sister, and has yet to find a romantic partner she wants to stay with forever, the fact is Blue has done extremely well for herself. Her life couldn't get much better. Or could it?

The talk show is filming for a week in Key West, so Blue and her crew jet off. Blue had no idea how much she would love the area, and she manages to wander around incognito for a while before coming across a house that beckons to her. Impetuously, she almost immediately buys the place, which is homey rather than grand. Purchasing a new home is just the first step in a series of changes that Key West will make in Blue's life. By coincidence or the maneuvering of fate, Mitch's parents live nearby, so he visits them. Mitch brings along his new girlfriend, a woman he feels he has a future with, and plans to shoot a documentary series with his son, Julian, who is now an esteemed photographer. When Blue offers to help Mitch and Julian with the production, the resulting working relationships are fraught with emotions --- and delightfully unexpected plot twists.

I have to say up front that if someone had briefly described this book to me --- famous celebrity talk show host, secrets, old flame, etc. --- I'd be expecting a glib, shallow, formulaic story that would feel like a tired retread. Which makes it all the sweeter to be able to say: I loved this book! Following the success of her debut novel, SOUVENIR, Therese Fowler infuses her characters with life, layering them until they could step off the page. She handles the search for Blue's son with a subtle hand, penning the perfect concluding chapter to that thread. Plot points that readers may predict far in advance are totally different from expected (and much better for it). Beautifully written and full of heart, REUNION is a satisfying tale perfect for a weekend escape from real life.