A Heart Revealed

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY!!!!

LESSMAN, JULIE

A HEART REVEALED

Her heart is tied to a youthful vow...but can true love set it free?

Ten years ago, Emma Malloy fled Dublin for Boston, running for her life. Her emotional wounds have finally faded, and her life is now full of purpose and free from the pain of her past. But when she falls for her friend Charity's handsome and charming brother, Sean O'Connor, fear and shame threaten to destroy her. Could Sean and Emma ever have a future together? Or is Emma doomed to live out the rest of her life denying the only true love she's ever known?

Filled with intense passion and longing, deception and revelation, A Heart Revealed will hold you in its grip until the very last page.

My Review:

Clear your calendar before you begin this book. Put the dog in a kennel, send the kids to their grandparents and make sure you have a lot of frozen dinners on hand. You don't want anything distracting you from reading! College student? No worries, attending every class is over-rated. Besides it's weeks before final exams. So put those textbooks down and keep them closed until you finish A Heart Revealed.  Have to work for a living? It's flu season, call in sick. You'll definitely be feeling feverish once you start reading anyway and your blood pressure will be rising and falling at an alarming rate. Good enough reasons to call in sick, don't you think?

As it turns out I actually do have the flu and I did stay home from church yesterday and work today so I had a non-stop reading fest...well, in between falling into feverish swoons and dozing stupors :-) Thank you, Julie Lessman for providing the best medicine for what ails me! A Heart Revealed has the best bedside manners around!

If you haven't guessed by now -- I LOVED this book!!! Lessman delivered just what I expected...and so much more. Her writer's voice gets more polished and fluent with every book. She has mastered the balance of description, dialogue and action -- each builds on the others to create vivid images that immersed this reader into another era.

I was thrilled with all the catching up I got to do with one of my favourite literary families because this book isn't just about Emma and Sean -- all the O'Connors make multiple appearances as Lessman expertly twines their stories with our hero and heroine's. In fact, I'd say that A Heart Revealed  is as much Charity and Katie's stories as it is Emma's.

Lessman created continuity between these three distinct threads by anchoring them with a common bond -- women who are grappling with issues from their past that still affect their present and threaten their future. When it comes right down to it, Emma, Charity and Katie are still bound by childhood perceptions that plague their feelings of value and self-worth. And no, it isn't evident in their every day life, but when stressors build and change is imminent, all three are propelled (in varying degrees) by misconceptions from their youth. It's an unconscious knee-jerk reaction in all of them and very realistically written by Lessman. Even as I groaned and moaned and chided these women's actions I understood where they were coming from. Talk about an anxiety-riddled read!

But though A Heart Revealed takes more than one twisty turn down the road of despair, the wonderful inspirational insights light the way towards hope. This is an area Lessman really excels in. Heartfelt conversations about faith between characters that are as natural as they are hard-hitting. And they in no way come off preachy. This book made me think and squirm and was, frankly, a God-send at this time in my life. God bless authors who listen to the Spirit when they write!

Giveaway Opportunity:

If you would like a chance to win a copy of Julie Lessman's A Heart Revealed, leave a comment below or email me at kavluvstoreadATyahooDOTca. Draw will be held and announced on Sunday October 2. Open internationally. Good luck!