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When Helene was young, she dreamed of the perfect man and filled her notebooks with stories about him and about love in its purest form. But after a messy divorce, she has let go of such naive fantasies. She has moved to a small town in Alaska, where she is ready to write her novel and build a new life without romance. Fate has other plans, though. Helene soon meets Sebastien Montague, a handsome fisherman who is her invented hero made flesh, down to the most idiosyncratic details. But how can a man she created possibly exist in the real world? While Helene tries to discover the truth behind his existence, Sebastien is determined to keep that truth from her, for he is a man scarred by serial tragedy, hiding a secret that has broken his heart time and again. Yet the shadows of the past emerge, endangering Helene and Sebastien's future before it even begins--and it becomes clear that it won't be easy to forge a new ending to the greatest love story of all time. A woman fleeing her disastrous marriage discovers that she is part of a legendary love story that spans lives, years, and continents in this modern-day reimagining of Romeo and Juliet.
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What a wonderful, romantic, beautiful piece of fiction. This was such a spectacular Romeo & Juliet retelling, with such a beautiful message of love and hope and living for today.
Grief is such a unique experience for every soul and yet, can tie people together in ways you never would have expected. And for Sebastian and Helene, it was more connecting than most.
This book was touching and poignant and I’m so glad I took a chance on it.
0The worst part of this book was far and away the writing style. It was painfully obvious the author was used to writing books meant for teen readers and was taking her first venture into adult fiction. The use of exclamation marks outside of dialogue was incredibly cringe and the incessant need to use parentheses to explain things within the story took away from a plot that had the potential to be magical.
Now on to the plot. This was a truly wonderful idea for a book but was executed poorly. First, the many characters mentioned who were initially made out to seem as important - Adam anyone? - and then we’re forgotten. What happened to the Mom and sister being so vital? Adan’s died with Sebastian is just… mute? And the idea that we are to believe the ex-husband would want to go to such lengths to blackmail just to advance his journalism career is preposterous. Almost as preposterous as the idea that upon revealing Sebastian’s big secret the government would come and kidnap him and run experiments for the rest of his immortal life. While he has this very powerful Swiss bank account on retainer that he spends all of his time bragging can get him out of anything.
And then what happened to the authors book? Are we reading it? Is what we’re reading what she was supposed to have written? I’m utterly perplexed. This seemed like a second draft in need of editing and a whole lot of reworking.
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