Review: Almost Perfect by Susan Mallery

July 3, 2010 by admin
Filed under: Book Reviews, Genre: Contemporary, Heat: Saucy, Reviews: rating 4.5 

 

Liz Sutton ran away from Fool’s Gold, CA when she was 18 years old. Daughter of an alcoholic, abusive mother with a reputation for prostitution, Liz had been the butt of everyone’s vicious and cruel jokes in town. She had no friends, except for Ethan Hendrix, a young man who was her first kiss and first love. But Ethan was young and immature and didn’t know how to deal with Liz’s reputation even though he knew firsthand that most was untrue. When his friends confronted Ethan about his relationship with Liz, he not only disavowed any relationship but called her ugly names. Liz retaliated by dumping a milkshake down his lap and then leaving town without word.

Three weeks later, she discovers that she was pregnant. Twelve years later, Liz is a bestselling mystery novelist, proud single mother, and living a comfortable life in San Francisco. On the first day of her son Tyler’s summer vacation, Liz receives a cry of help from nieces she never knew she had from a brother she hadn’t seen for more than eighteen years. Her brother’s children are in trouble. Their father is in prison and their stepmother abandoned them with only $100 to survive. They had been living for three weeks on stolen potato chips and are now pleading for help.

Liz picks up Tyler, packs some clothes and heads back to Fool’s Gold to help her family. She doesn’t know what will happen and is adamant that she isn’t going to stay. She never intended to return, but she couldn’t help her family by staying away…

Almost Perfect by Susan Mallery is the second book in Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series. Fool’s Gold is a small town in California, a close-knit community that is renowned for support and tolerance of their members. Liz Sutton, with her faults, is an entirely believable character and Mallery’s writing is so poignant and real that she made me both laugh and cry. I grew up in a small town and Liz’s story and her success is quite realistic albeit not the norm. Ethan’s character is a good man, but as a teenager, he was caught between doing the right thing and standing up for his girlfriend, and following the edicts of his parents and socialization of his friends. Their love story as young teenagers was bound to fail but now as adults they have both matured and become individuals.

I very much enjoyed Almost Perfect and look forward to the continuation of the lives of the Fool’s Gold community. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a traditional contemporary romance complete with a feel-good ending, descriptive plot twists, intense character development and emotional passages so tragic that it makes you cry. Almost Perfect is one of Susan Mallery’s best. ~ Christine, www.ireadromance.com

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