Evenfall

Evenfall by Liz Michalski
Source: Purchased
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
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My book of choice while staying in Ocean City, NJ this past Memorial Day weekend was Evenfall  written by Liz Michalski. It is written from three different points of view. First, there is Andie, a 30-something young woman who comes back to the farm where she spent summers as a child with her Aunt Gert, Aunt Clara, and Uncle Frank. Clara and Frank have died and Andie returns to the farm to help Gert clean the house out and get ready to possibly sell it. Gert is the second character whose point of view we get to see. As a young woman, Gert and Frank were in love, but a combination of circumstance and choices kept them from marrying. Frank ended up marrying Gert’s sister Clara instead. Frank, still in love with Gert, lingers on as a ghost. One of the best parts of the book is that Frank’s ghost is an actual character and the third point of view the book is written from. When I first picked this book up, I thought the story sounded great, but I was a little worried about how the ghost element would manifest itself. Hauntings and ghosts in books, especially romance books, often come across as silly "bumps in the night" and “signs” from a lost loved one. Boy, was I glad to be wrong in this case. From the very first pages, we know that Frank is a ghost and a prominent character in the story. This whole scenario requires a little suspension of disbelief, it is fiction after all, but I really think Frank's ghost adds a lot to the story.

Gert, who is still alive, is haunted by regret for letting Frank go. Having lost the great love of her life, Gert is in a unique position to give Andie romantic advice when she finds herself in a relationship with Cort, a young man she babysat as a child. He’s all grown up now of course, but Andie convinces herself that Cort is nothing more than a summer fling. Even though it turns out to be much more than that, Andie does not know how to handle it. She has just come out of a bad relationship with a man I just love to hate. The best word I can use to describe him is “slimy.” He is a total charmer which really is just a nice way of saying he's a master manipulator and I was more than happy to root for Andie and Cort to work things out. Overall, this is a fabulous read for a day at the beach or any other time you have to just relax and escape to the book’s idyllic farm setting and get lost in a great story.