Debbie Macomber is never afraid to tackle hot-button contemporary issues. In It's Better This Way, she delivers a highly charged story that packs an emotional wallop, centered on the aftermath of breakups and a middle-aged romance that faces opposition from their two complicated families.
This tightly woven story is bound by many threads. After 31 years of marriage, Julia Jones's golf-pro husband, Eddie, left her for another woman. Julia is finally ready, after six months of readjustment and transition, to embark on a new chapter in her life. She sells the family home and her design business and then moves into the Heritage, an upscale building in downtown Seattle, Wash. Her supportive adult daughters, Hillary and Marie--furious with their father, his choices and the hurtfulness of his actions--cheer her on. When Julia starts working out in the exercise room at the Heritage, she meets Heath, a divorced hedge-fund manager and father of two sons, Adam and Michael, close in age to Julia's girls. When Julia and Heath strike up a friendship that slowly begins to heat up into something more, their respective children become leery and try to quash the middle-aged couple's chance at forging new love.
Macomber (A Walk Along the Beach; Window on the Bay) has a firm grasp on issues that will resonate with readers of domestic fiction. Well-drawn characters and plotting--coupled with strong romantic subplots and striking coincidences--will keep readers rooting for forgiveness, hope and true love to conquer all. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines