Review of Lauraine Snelling’s One Perfect Day
December 2, 2008
This week, the
Christian Fiction Blog Alliance
is introducing
FaithWords (October 22, 2008)
by
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Today, Lauraine Snelling is a member of the more than Two Million Books In Print club, but when she first began, she was a mother of three teenagers with a simple dream to write “horse books for kids.”
All told, she has over 50 books published. She thinks. She’s not sure. She’d rather write them than count them. Lauraine’s work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish and German as well as produced as books on tape.
Awards have followed her dedication to “telling a good story”: the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.
Helping others reach their writing dream is the reason Lauraine teaches at writer’s conferences across the country. She mentors others through book doctoring and with her humorous and playful Writing Great Fiction tape set. Lauraine also produces material on query letters and other aspects of the writing process.
Her readers clamor for more books more often and Lauraine would like to comply, if only her ever-growing flower gardens didn’t call quite so loudly over the soothing rush of the water fountains in her back yard and if the hummingbirds weren’t quite so entertaining. Lauraine and husband Wayne have two grown sons and a cockatiel named Bidley, who loves to tease their Basset Hound named Chewy.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two mothers end up more closely connected that they could dream…and yet they are strangers to one another.
The first has two children–twins, a boy and girl, who are seniors in high school. She wants their last Christmas as a family living in the same home to be perfect, but her husband is delayed returning from a business trip abroad. And then there’s an accident–a fatal one involving a drunk driver.
Meanwhile, the other mother has a daughter who needs a new heart, and so the loss of one woman becomes the miracle the other has desperately prayed for. While one mother grieves, and pulls away from her family, the other finds that even miracles aren’t always easy to receive.
If you would like to read the first chapter of One Perfect Day, go HERE
Sally Says: This was my first Lauraine Snelling book, and while the book didn’t wow me, I did enjoy it.
The plot isn’t anything unusual — one person’s death leads to life for another — but I thought Snelling did a good job of showing both sides of the story. One thing she dealt with that I particularly liked is the horrible fear that they’d actually killed their family member by agreeing to donate organs, the whole “What if they would have woken up in another week or two?” thought. I’ve never dealt with this situation so I don’t know any of the medical information needed to make this decision, but when I’ve thought about organ donating, I’ve always wondered, “How do they know that person really is gone?” So I liked that she included that in the story.
The one thing I didn’t like was that the story didn’t seem to have a real ending. I know that when you’re dealing with grief and the loss of a family member, it’s hard to find that Happily Ever After ending, but still, there needs to be something that brings finality to the entire story, and to me it felt like the book just stopped.
While this review obviously isn’t a ringing endorsement for the book, I do think that those who are fans of women’s fiction and tear jerkers will enjoy One Perfect Day. Snelling is a very good writer and I think that most who read the book will enjoy it.
Comments
One Response to “Review of Lauraine Snelling’s One Perfect Day”
The plot sounds a little like one of my favorite movies–Return to Me–although the movie was handled with humor. One of those stories that makes you laugh and cry. It’s an interesting premise.