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Review

Grace

by R. Rodriguez

The author:

R. Rodriguez - Mother, Educator, Wife, and Author. My mind wanders with curiosity. My loyalties lie with a time when my life was "so called", I was full of "Teen Spirit", and the best love in the world came from a "Champion Lover". I'm obsessed with the minds of men and women who have made a major difference for humanity. From Jesus to Jared Leto. :) Words are my playground. In them lies my passion. I live in Puerto Rico with my husband and two kids. My works in progress are Chastity: An Eternal Beloved Novel and Renaissance Quest, a children's book.

source: R.Rodriguez’s blog

First sentence:

There was once a little girl from a small town in Illinois who posed for her daddy’s camera.

Summary:

Grace Elizabeth Coventry has wanted to die since puberty. Since then, she carries out elaborate plans to end her life. She almost succeeds on her eighteenth birthday, but when an outside force emerges to carry out the deed, an inexplicable survival instinct awakens in her. It’s too late, though. Death has already noticed her. As she hangs on for dear life from the ledge of the Skyway Bridge in Chicago, about to give up to her fate, an unexpected stranger appears to save her, only to be challenged by the ultimate threat. In the end, only she has the power to save herself.

source: Goodreads

My opinion:

While reading the book I was kind of afraid of writing the review because I wasn’t sure what I thought about Grace – An Eternal Beloved Novel. I couldn’t quite understand the protagonist and struggled with her behaviour.

She seems to be drawn to men who do not treat her well and use her like they want and she still returns and is faithful. I wanted to scream and throw my Kindle against the wall (I didn’t do it) but then suddenly it hit me. Grace is a real life character! She is like so many women in this world. She looks for love and when she finds it she clings to it with the last peace of strength she has.

Unfortunately even with men – or better with this one man – who treated her like dirt. And this was the part that was unbelievable to me. Not as in “I don’t think that this might happen somewhere in the world”, no, as in “I can’t believe that there are women out there being treated like that and still stay in those relationships”.

After this epiphany I must say that it was really refreshing to have such a well portrayed, life-like character and a story that shows the ugly bits and pieces of relationships.

Once I wasn’t quite able to follow the story but I discovered that there was a time gap between two events that I either missed or that wasn’t explained well enough. Apart from that I really enjoyed the novel and loved reading a realistic portrait of a young woman’s struggle with life – all the joyous events but also all the ugly things that happen to her.

In her e-mail R. characterized this novel as a YA Paranormal Romance. This novel touches many different topics and the paranormal elements are really moderate so if you are interested in a well written story about a young woman struggling with her life and if you want to know if she finally finds what she is looking for, than I strongly recommend reading R. Rodriguez’s Grace – An Eternal Beloved Novel.

It is the first book in a series of four books. Each book in the series has a central theme pertaining to young women in a paranormal romance setting. The second book in the series, Chastity will be published in July 2012.

Grace – An Eternal Beloved Novel is available at Amazon for your Kindle for $ 3,20/ EUR 2,45/ 

£ 1,98.

For more information visit R. Rodriguez’s Facebook page.

Thank you to R. Rodriguez for sending me this book as a review copy