Friday, July 13, 2012

Review - The 90 Day Rule by Diane Nelson


When playing by the rules means stepping over the line…


Sometimes starting over means trying out assault and battery, especially when the object d’ violence is a cheating husband caught in the act. Restraining orders aside, safety comes in numbers and having certain … standards.

For Jessamine chaos and capitulation are facts of life. Giving up dreams to service her husband’s ambitions and enabling the same blind submission in her own daughter ends abruptly, leaving her rootless, homeless and destitute. 

For some people, it is the kindness of strangers who make the difference but for Jes it is the unlikely alliance of the mother-in-law-from-hell, a devastatingly handsome basketball coach and a phalanx of determined team members who convince a woman of a certain age that beginning again doesn’t mean giving up or giving in.

The only problem is … there’s that pesky 90 day rule.

Review-
Who says love and romance is only for the twenty-something crowd? I’m a firm believer that there’s no expiration date on a woman’s heart, and THE 90 DAY RULE by Diane Nelson proves the point.

Jes’s story is one far too many women have lived. At an early age, her dreams fell under the bus that was her husband’s career, relegating her to the subservient role of token wife in charge of nothing but raising the perfect child and projecting the image of the perfect family. It’s all about keeping up images, until she catches her philandering husband in bed with a woman/girl young enough to be his daughter.

Fresh out of options, Jes is sleeping on the sofa in her daughter’s college digs while she tries to knit together a new life with tattered threads from the old one. Help comes from an unexpected source, but like most gifts, it comes with strings attached – play the devoted wife for ninety days, long enough to get her husband re-elected, in exchange for a quick divorce complete with a financial settlement that will allow her to resuscitate her dreams.

This is a wonderfully refreshing read jam-packed with real emotion and realistic conflict. As a reader well past the twenty-something mark, I appreciate a mature heroine with mature issues. Can she pick up where she left off all those years ago? Are the dreams of her youth no longer attainable or realistic at her age? What, exactly, does she have to offer the world? What is she to do with unexpected desire, and the important question in any romance, can she dare to love again?

I loved Jes’s journey from lost and broken to grounded and strong. The transformation isn’t easy, but real life rarely is. THE 90 DAY RULE is honest, and real, and fabulous, as well as refreshing, bold, and well written with layers upon layers to make a reader think along the way. I give it five stars for originality in a genre that too often takes the freeway when a side road might be more interesting.



1 comment:

  1. Thank you so much. It pleases me that this story resonated with you.

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