Title: Reunion
Author: Therese Fowler
Summary:
Blue Reynolds lives a hard earned life of wealth and significance as an Oprah-esque host of her own syndicated talk show. Seemingly as put together and clean cut as they come, what the public doesn’t know is that behind the polished exterior Blue is trying to keep a secret from the world. Scorned by her significantly older married lover Mitch, Harmony Blue Kucharski (as she’s then known) picks up and runs away from her job, family and friends to live a drug and party filled existence. That is until she realizes she’s pregnant.
Scared, relatively alone, and confident that keeping the child is a bad idea she hires a midwife to facilitate a home birth and closed adoption. After giving her son up Harmony takes to rebuilding her life by focusing on a career in the media. Changing her name and navigating a series of increasingly important jobs Blue finally finds herself at the top of her field in The Blue Reynolds Show. As the premier talk show host in the counrty Blue does her best to use her influence for good in the hopes of filling the void her absent child left behind.
At the peak of her popularity Blue embarks on a mission to find her child all while keeping the secret from her family, majority of her friends, and most importantly the public. As luck would have it during a location shoot in Key West she runs into Mitch and his family and the process of rekindling their long defunct romance begins. Or does it?
Undertaking the secret search for her son, navigating the romantic entanglements between she, Mitch and countless others, as well as handling her career Blue certainly has more than her fair share of issues to handle.
Opinion
The Chicago base for Blue and her talk show was a bit distracting because of the strong resemblance to Oprah’s home base. Given the fact that Chicago didn’t play a major role in the story overall Blue’s childhood and subsequent career could have been set in any large city and worked just as well. In fact, the only point of geography that played a significant role in the story was Key West and in this case it was wonderfully portrayed and valuable to the progression of the story.
Furthermore, the main reason Blue was hiding the secret birth and child she’d given up should have been given more focus. Small references were made several times but it seemed minimally significant, more an afterthought than an actual expansion of the overall plot. To make the secret and it’s later fall out more believable it should have had more prominence throughout the story.
What I loved about this story is Fowler’s ability to build great characters. She does a fabulous job crawling into their minds then depicting it to the reader. Major players (Blue, Mitch, Julian) each have his/her own in depth back-story that intrigues enough to stand alone, yet they are intricately intertwined together in subtle places so subsequent relationships are all the more believable. of the story were well written with realism and focus to detail. Each character’s motivations and the interaction with his/her respective partner generated feelings of compassion, longing, and hope.
In the end, the beauty of this story lies in the strong relationships built. Not only does Fowler focus attention on numerous romantic entanglements, but also the strain of distant family relationships, the love parents have for their children, and the effects one’s professional choices have on their personal lives.
Title: The Bachelorette Party
