Book Review – Feels Like Falling by Kristy Woodson Harvey

Feels Like Falling
Kristy Woodson Harvey
Print Length: 400 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books (April 28, 2020)
Publication Date: April 28, 2020
Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
Language: English
ASIN: B07TGF9Z93

BOOK BLURB: It’s summertime on the North Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy.

Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your sister to her evangelical husband, and your husband to his executive assistant. Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger fired from her job at the local pharmacy.

Diana Harrington’s summer isn’t off to the greatest start either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their shared house with only a busted Impala for a bed. Lucky for her, Gray has an empty guest house and a very guilty conscience.

With Gray’s kindness, Diana’s tide begins to turn, but when the one that got away comes back, every secret from her past seems to resurface all at once. And, as Gray begins to blaze a new trail, she discovers, with Diana’s help, that what she envisioned as her perfect life may not be what she wants at all.

REVIEW: I was delighted to get an advanced review copy of Kristy’s new book which is now available for pre-order at Amazon. I’ve been a fan of her stories ever since I read her first book Dear Carolina for review. She has a way of bringing interesting and very flawed characters together to make a story that has great contrasts of emotional and dramatic highs and lows.

Gray and Diana are wonderful, strong characters and they are as distinct on paper as they are in life. Even if the reader was not alerted to the POV change by breaks titled with the character’s name, there is never a doubt as to whose section one is reading. The narrative style flawlessly changes to match the character who is on stage at the moment, something Kristy has done well in each of her books.

One of the things that I especially appreciate about Kristy’s work – and it is very evident in Feels Like Falling – are the tidbits of wisdom that are dropped throughout. Early on in the book we get a glimpse of her mother’s wisdom as Gray recalls hearing her mother talking to a friend about living on after losing a child. Gray had a brother who died some years past, but the friend’s loss is fresh. Gray’s mother tells her friend, “… that every day when she wakes up she should get up and get out of the bed. And do something that the child didn’t get to do. Some days you won’t want to, but while you’re here you have to make the choice to live.”

Further along the story, when Diana is considering all the ramifications of love and trust and the way her life has been battered by those who could never love her enough to stay, she thinks about how much easier it is to just run away from the possibility of love before that person can run away from you. How true that is for people like her who was abandoned by her mother and bounced from foster home to foster home, then left by a series of boyfriends.

The book will release just in time for thinking about what you might want to have on hand for summer reading, and I highly recommend you put Feels Like Falling high on your list.

BUY LINK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kristy Woodson Harvey is a born-and-bred North Carolina girl who loves all four seasons—especially fall in Chapel Hill, where she attended college, and summer in Beaufort, where she and her family spend every free moment. The author of Dear Carolina and Lies and Other Acts of Love, Kristy is also the founder of the popular interior design blog Design Chic. You can follow Kristy on her website – Facebook – Twitter and Pinterest She can also be found on Instragram as  @kristywharvey