Customer Reviews

Violette Between

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a man, as a fan of thrillers and such, I don't normally read books aimed at the female audience. It's not that I don't appreciate a great novel ("The Secret Life of Bees" is one of my favorites, for example), it's that I want realistic characters and scenarios as opposed to romantic idealism.

Which is why I like Alison Strobel's books. In "Worlds Collide," she gave us humor and romance in a story of true conflict and honesty. "Violette Between" is even harder hitting, dealing with sorrow and loss and relational struggles. Violette, a woman widowed at a young age, finds herself slowly opening to a new relationship with an understanding man. She is hesitant to commit, though. When a fall from a ladder puts her in the hospital, she wrestles through memories and finds her heart torn between the husband she lost and the man who now loves her.

Strobel embraces all aspects--spiritual concerns, physical attraction, and emotional seesawing--without compromising the integrity of her story. Through flashbacks (which were sometimes distracting for me), she gives understanding of Violette's past and present relationships. Although I found the opening to be slow going, I was drawn into Violette's turmoil. The dialogue is believable. The characters are richly drawn. By the end, I was completely wrapped up in the answers to Violette's questions.

With Strobel's clear vision, she is sure to give us more enjoyable novels.

Violette Between hits me. It is a story about people whose spouses died. I'm one of those. Those of us who have lost our mates at an unexpectedly early age (Is there ever an age that is not too young?) have peculiar scars. Reading this novel brings thoughts to mind that I had forgotten, and it heals emotional damage I didn't realize I had.

Alison Strobel portrays the pain so well that one would think she had lived through it. The scene of the closet that needs to be cleaned out is one that all bereaved will benefit from because it allows the reader to step outside and look in by seeing how others manage similar problems. If you are one of these wounded warriors, you must read this book. Others will love it too for the good story and the well-crafted approach.

She does a masterful job of showing what could be going on in the mind of a person in a coma. I wonder whether she has experienced this condition. Violette, the main character, is an artist. Strobel portrays the technical aspects of art so well that I wonder whether she is an artist.

This book keeps me turning the pages with its tension in the people's minds, anxiety about what will happen, and switching back and forth between two... or three...people's stories. The use of flashbacks makes the novel a challenging piece of writing that the reader can enjoy following. The flashbacks require the reader to pay attention. They are skillfully done, but the novel cannot be read effectively if the reader is thinking about something else. As a Southerner accustomed to reading William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, I have learned to enjoy flashbacks. More than one story line is being told at once to lead to the conclusion.

A special feature is the use of a doppelganger to help move the story along. It would spoil the story to explain too much about this clever feature.
Violette Between is an interactive book. Alison Strobel, with the help of the character who is a clinical psychologist, pulls out emotions out of our emotional closets and forces us to deal with them. I especially love the explanation that it is okay - not disloyal and not unhealthy - to love the person who is dead and to love someone who is alive at the same time. It is okay to have feelings connected to that person who has moved on to heaven, but it is a waste of a good life to remain frozen in the past. Every person in this situation must decide whether to move from the position between the past and the present.

One of the helpful aspects of the book is the illustration of the steps that we all go through as we cope with grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Keeping this model in mind, Alison develops the plot with plausible events.

This novel can help the reader examine his own relationship with the Lord and find the peace that passes understanding. The supernatural aspects of the story are presented in a believable manner.

One little problem I see in the book has to do with the medical technology in a scene near the end.

I highly recommend this book. It is not didactic; it is simply a good story. At the same time, it can bring healing to a broken heart. A good book can be a good story and also add to our emotional or intellectual capacity. Such a book is VIOLETTE BETWEEN.

I thought this book was absolutely excellent! The story was great and it really dealt with some issues that Christians face today in a Christ-like way. It didn't condone practices that go against the Bible, but did discuss how Christians should deal with them. Overall, Alison is an excellent author, and I look forward to seeing more of her work!

This book was wonderful. I randomly picked up World's Collide and instantly became a fan of Alison's books. Violette Between is a wonderful story. The way she tells it from both of the characters perspectives is wonderful. If you're looking for a book where you feel connected with the characters, and don't want to put it down, read any of Alison Strobel's books. I'm a fan for life!

Viollete and Christian are survivors of their lost spouses; trying to build a future together in spite of their painful memories. Drawn together after their respective grieving periods, they've forged a tenuous bond, taking tentative steps forward in new, awkward love, as well as getting to know the God they'd previously blamed for taking their loved ones from them.

Viollete - a free-spirited painter - struggles with losing her husband Saul to a sudden heart attack, and even though she's found new love with Christian, a relationship psychologist who's also recovering from losing his wife Cynthia to cancer, she finds it hard to let go of the past.

Despite lingering doubts about Viollete's love for him, Christian is happy; his practice is thriving, he and Viollete are at least enjoying each other, and both of them are growing in their relationship with God. Inside, he still questions her true feelings, wondering how much she still hangs onto Saul, but for the moment, life is good.

Tragedy comes with Viollete's fall while painting a mural, leaving her unresponsive and in a coma. While she wanders a ghostly hall in her mind, forced to watch moments from her past with Saul, Christian is once again faced with losing a loved one, and he desperately searches God's will for peace of mind, while paradoxically blaming Him for threatening his love once again.

Viollete Between, by Allison Strobel Morrow, admirably tries to take us to a place few Christian novels dare meddle with - the interior halls of the mind, as Viollete works through her past anguish at losing Saul, reconciling her love for him and the growing love she feels for Christian. Though not about a trip through the afterlife, Between invokes thoughts of What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.

The goal is ambitious, and though well written in spots, Viollete's flashback sequences are somewhat awkward. The author is trying to paint a ghostly Viollete observing the past Viollete, and while this might've been effective in a movie or television show, the POV (point of view) narrative is somewhat confusing. Better to either make Viollete re-experience all these moments unknowingly, with a flutter of déjà vu here and there, or provide a guide for her, ala Cuba Gooding in What Dreams May Come.

The book does touch on some tender moments, and kudos to Morrow for not "moralizing" the experience of grieving spouses - there's no "spiritual band-aid" here; Viollete and Christian struggle with God, they wrestle, they feel pain and question their faith, as well as themselves.

Given some of the heart-warming moments of sentimentality, I really wanted to give this book a `4'; I was leaning that way most of the story. The main problem, though, is the entire narrative consists of flashbacks; Viollete's flashbacks of Saul, and Christian's flashbacks of meeting Viollete. There came a moment in the book, for me, when I suddenly realized there had been no forward progression, and Viollete was still in her coma, Christian still by her bedside.

Other than that, it's a good, emotionally moving tale about two very different people making a relationship work - both Viollete and Saul, and then Viollete and Christian. It also grapples with the important question of how to move on from a passed spouse to love again, without dishonoring their memory.

3 out of 5 stars.

Violette Between by Alison Strobel is the story of a woman given the chance to relive her past and the choice whether to stay within it or move forward to the future. Violette has suffered the loss of her beloved husband Saul, and her new relationship with Christian is rocky, so her choice is not an easy one. Strobel puts forth an intriguing question and handles it remarkably well. The narration switches between Violette and Christian, and the technique works well to convey the depth of emotion within each character. Strobel also stays true to Christian fiction, working in conversion experiences for both characters that seem natural. The theme of trusting God in all things is a hard lesson to learn, but a vital one.

Alison gave us WORLDS COLLIDE - a good read. And now this project which shows how Ms. Strobel is maturing as a writer. A poignant, moving contemporary story that captures relationships and their ups & downs. Highly recommend this fine story and its author. I now anxiously await what else comes from her keyboard!

Violette was once a highly regarded artist who lived life with élan and loved her Saul with her soul. When Saul suddenly died, Violette died too. She stopped painting and lost her gusto for life.

Violette meets psychiatrist Christian, a widow, who still mourns the loss of his wife though several years have passed. Still he and Violette begin seeing one another and help each other return to the world of the living. However, tragedy strikes again. Christian finds Violette crumbled on the floor near a ladder in his waiting room, which she was painting to look like a New York rooftop restaurant. While she resides in a coma with no other physical injuries, he holds her hand and tells her he loves her and needs to come back. Meanwhile Violette is on a different journey to a place where she meets Saul. Will she choose to remain with her beloved first love or go back to her second love?

VIOLETTE BETWEEN is a powerful character study of a nice woman who has finally rebounded from the trauma of the death of a beloved with a new love (though she will always cherish her Saul) only to have tragedy strike again. The story line follows Violette as she is in an in between station either heading to an afterlife with Saul or coming back to this life with Christian. Alison Strobel provides a poignant tale that Christian readers will appreciate as heaven sounds like a complex place when one considers eternal relationships.

Harriet Klausner

I was impressed with this book though at time I found it a bit difficult to follow. The narrative goes from third person to first person, alternating chapters. While it was interesting to be inside Violette's head it also took me out of the flow of Christian's part in the story. At the same time I do see the sense in what Strobel did, and I appreciate it. It was interesting to see how two different people, with different levels of faith, handled their grief and moved on with their life. Watching both characters struggle through the accident made me very sympathetic to them and I admit to a tear being shed.

Violette Between is a well written story, taking an honest look at love, loss, relationships and faith. Check it out!

"Between HERE and the PAST there lies a place...a place of longing for what has been rather than hoping for what could be..."

The back cover copy goes on, but that sentence sums up the feel of the book. I would classify it as women's fiction (though I think men would enjoy it, too, if they like Nicholas Sparks) that examines the challenge of a love lived completely but lost colliding with the possibility of new love.

Violette is an artist who lives life with passion and joy. When we first meet her she's headed to work on a mural and seems completely in love with Dr. Christian Roch. Both have loved and lost, and now they are exploring love with each other. Christian brings her lunch at work and finds her lying on the floor.

The rest of the story weaves intricately between Violette's past and Christian's questions about their future. The one hiccup I had with the book was not paying attention to the date headings at the beginning of each chapter. Once I figured out the interplay between the two story lines, I rushed through the chapters because I was so eager to get back to each story.

There is an honest interplay of the issues and choices we each face. Will we choose to live in the past that we know and can predict, or will we step into the unknown of the future with hope and faith that it can be as good as -- though different than -- the past.