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Date Posted: 15:33:45 06/17/05 Fri
Author: Syl
Subject: Her Mother's Shadow

This looks good! Sent in by Beccabee. Thanks, lass!



TITLE: Her Mother's Shadow

AUTHOR: Diane Chamberlain

GENRE: Fiction

Paperback edition published January 2005, Hardback edition (2/2004)
still in print


This book was an impulse buy for me, especially as the blurbs on the
back cover read like the kind of inspirational/romance novel that turn
me off completely, but I liked the picture on the cover. Super reason
for buying a book, eh? I ended up really, really liking the story. The
premise is that time and love don't heal all wounds, but will help to
scab them over a little. It doesn't insult one by claiming that a new
boyfriend or whatever will miraculously erase all pain and create a new
wondrous future.

Her Mother's Shadow's heroine, twenty-six year old Lacey, has come home
to live with her brother and his wife and small child. Thirteen years
earlier, on Christmas Eve, she and her mother had gone to help serve a
meal at the local battered women's safe house. Lacey's mother is known
around the town for her good works and even has the nickname "St. Anne."

Shortly after the meal begins, an enraged husband (who never revealed
how he found the place) kicked down the door and stalked his wife and
son with a gun. Lacey's mother stepped in front of the woman and boy and
was shot and killed. In the intervening years Lacey had been assuaging
her pain with drugs and sex. Long cured of the drugs, she has come home
to try to learn how not to be a slut. Her welcoming family as well as
the remote North Carolina coast location, a keeper's cottage next to a
ruined lighthouse, have had a soothing impact on her heart. She has a
job she loves in the mornings working with her father in his veterinary
clinic and another job in the afternoons with her aging hippy biological
father as a stained glass artist in his popular studio.

One day soon after the story begins Lacey is shocked by the death of her
childhood best friend, Jessica, thousands of miles away in Arizona.
Jessica had moved to Arizona to be with relatives after becoming
pregnant at age fifteen. Her uppity mother didn't want her anywhere
near. The child, Mackenzie, is now eleven years old and to Lacey's
horror, Jessica has given her sole custody in her will.

Mackenzie and Lacey soon find out they detest each other. Lacey falls
further and further behind at each of her jobs staying home to try to
"bond" with the girl. Nothing she does works and Mackenzie remains a
smart-mouthed nasty preteen nightmare. Added to the mix, Lacey is under a
deadline to prepare a victim's impact statement to keep the man who
killed her mother from gaining parole. Then, the requisite handsome
stranger starts to court her, dark, rich, intelligent, great job,
wonderful listener, all around swell guy. But then Lacey decides to
bring the man who Jessica had confided to her was Mackenzie's father
into the know to see if he can help her to reach the girl. Even though
he had never heard of the child he came right away, an old "friend" from
Lacey's past, a major bad boy, still good looking, rakish and
mysterious. Although he greatly eased her difficulties with the child,
he intensified Lacey's harsh recollections from the time of her mother's
death that had already been stirred by the parole hearing issue.

Wrapped around Lacey's story is the story of the wife of the murderer
and how she structured her life around the need to atone for her
ex-husband's actions. With maturity and a nursing degree at the time of
the tragedy she was able to channel her grief into constructive
pursuits, but still, she doesn't think much of herself.

This all sounds like a mix for a dreadful romance novel with platitudes
aplenty and sappy solutions, but the author did an excellent job of
keeping the story human. Of course, she added some melodrama to propel
the action, but even those situations were not out of the realm of
possibility.

At the end, most of the problems were eased, not solved,
people were still working toward becoming better at who they were and
the reader was left wishing the best for them.

A really good read.

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Replies:

[> I like the sound of stories that have "messy" relationships and flawed characters. I'll be looking for this one at the library. -- Melina, 17:53:47 06/20/05 Mon


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[> Same here. Thanks Beccabee -- Marg B, 18:22:55 06/20/05 Mon


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[> Becca, I find you and I have really similar tastes in books, so if you liked it, it's going on my TBR pile! ;) Thanks for the review! -- Reid, 18:39:39 06/20/05 Mon


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[> Sounds like a damn good read beccabee -sigh, another one to add to the list!! -- SueP, 02:12:30 06/21/05 Tue


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[> Diane Chamberlaine is a great author....I started reading her on the advice of someone here at this site and ended up reading 12 of her books and enjoyed everyone. Her books have mystery and romance, but they aren't the run of the mill story. They have good plot and character development with a nice style and flow to her words. -- Jan R., 14:40:06 01/05/06 Thu


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