Book Review

Many thanks to Dennis Moore of SDWriteway, an affiliate of East County Magazine in San Diego for his wonderful review of "Choices".  To visit his page, you can go to www.sdwriteway.org

Choices

by Carole McKee (AuthorHouse, Bloomington, Indiana, 2008, 590 pages.)

Book Review by Dennis Moore

We all have choices to make in life … some good, some bad. Carole McKee, the author of Choices conveys passion and emotion in her spellbinding book of romance and tragedy, inducing the readers to laugh and cry with the characters in the story. Choices is a modern day Romeo and Juliet, so emotional that I found myself crying throughout the book, mostly because it reminded me of my teenage daughter Brandy and my aspirations for her professed love and happiness.

Lindy and Ricky are young and in love. Lindy is pretty, blond and petite, and is still grieving over the loss of her mother and sad because her father ignores her. Ricky, tall, dark, and extremely handsome, still misses his father who died suddenly from a heart attack when Ricky was thirteen. Since he just can’t get along with his nagging mother, she sends him away from Chicago to live with his uncle in Pittsburgh. On his second day in a new school, he meets Lindy, and from the moment they meet they are dazzled by the strong electricity between them. By the end of the day a strong bond has already begun to form between them. Their relationship is challenged by many adversities, but through it all, the bond only becomes stronger and makes them even more determined to be together. Ricky’s Uncle Nick loves both Lindy and Ricky and recognizes that their love for each other is very real. He becomes a strong ally in their corner as they challenge the rest of the world defending their love and the right to be together forever.

Readers will fall in love with Lindy and Ricky, the central characters in this well written book by McKee, as they evolve from youth to adulthood. The author weaves into this story elements of tragedy that is eerily similar to my own family life. A case in point would be Lindy losing her spleen in an accidental gunshot injury, just as my own son Damien actually did.

This book, worthy of a full length movie, has all the elements of human tragedy, which includes a murder mystery … along with the requisite heroes and villains. It has strong characters as well as a redemptive spirit. It has poignant moments in which the teenage characters, Lindy and Ricky, teaches adults who had seemingly fallen out of love with each other, Nick and Liz, how to love each other again.

This is a tremendous book, that I highly recommend for so many reasons.

Dennis Moore has been a member of the San Diego Writers/Editors Guild and has been a freelance contributor to the San Diego Union-Tribune Newspaper and EURweb. He is also the author of a book about Chicago politics; “The City That Works: Power, Politics and Corruption in Chicago.” Mr. Moore can be contacted at contracts_agency@yahoo.com or you can follow him on Twitter at: @DennisMoore8.