After starting Love Comes Home and falling in love with the characters and writing of Andrew Grey, I started to research him (and Dreamspinner Press) and quickly found it was the third in a series titled Senses. I immediately reached out to his publicist to see if they would provide copies of the first two, Love Comes Silently and Love Comes In Darkness to review and they did! This is my honest opinion of the book and I received no compensation.
Love Comes Silently is the story of Hannah, Ken and Patrick. A doctor diagnoses Hannah in the prologue with cancer, after she and her father, Ken, recently moved to Michigan. Patrick, a neighbor dealing with his own inner demons, slowly becomes a major part of their lives and this is their story. Now we all know I’m a sap, but this novel (and Grey’s amazing intuition with story line placement) really got to me. I found myself crying on three separate occasions.
Now with a story set up like a child with cancer, you might assume the three occasions for tears were sad, but each one of them was happy tears. Grey structured the novel in such a way that as soon as you hit the lowest of the lows emotionally you were guaranteed to turn a page and, even though by the end you know what’s coming, you tear up out of happiness and joy. This starts early on in the novel and we as the reader get to follow Ken’s progression as he slowly realized what happens and who is making things happen and it just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I caught myself getting impatient with the novel because of its pacing. However, when I took a minute to think about it I realized it wasn’t this novel, but because of how quickly so many other romance novels move through their stories and romances. This novel paced things excellently and I think a large part of this comes from the fact that Ken has Hannah and this slows down any sort of relationship he could form. This multi-facet approach to romance only further deepens and strengthens Grey’s story and made me fall that much more in love with the characters.
In addition to the story and the characters, I appreciated the tasteful way Grey approached sex in the novel. There were reservations and hesitations, again from Ken’s having a family and Patrick’s own history, and the scenes were not over done or smutty. He probably could’ve left the last one out, but I’m not complaining and it most definitely fit within the way Patrick expressed his feelings and emotions via action.
Recommendation: I would definitely recommend this book. I’m excited to check out the others in the series and will most definitely look into other writings by Grey to find out how broad his repertoire is.
Opening Line: “Ken moved quietly through the small house, darting around boxes as his insides twisted and turned with every sound that came from Hannah’s room.”
Closing Line: “Ken looked at Patrick and moved closer, feeling Patrick’s arm glide around his waist. ‘A family portrait.’ Ken looked to Patrick, and he nodded.” (Whited out.)
So you can contact publishers and ask for review copies. How come I didn’t think of that? However, considering I’m so far behind in reviews, that might be a good thing. Thanks for the introduction to the series.
Haahaa I’ve only ever done it once before after I read a great book to see if they had anything else they’d recommend. This one was a series so I took a chance and they actually reached out to the author! I know some people send out a lot of requests directly to publishers but I don’t want to overcommit myself so I stick to fun reads 🙂