book 1 - finished!

Skipping a Beat by Sarah Pekkanen

I have a tendency to buy any book that Amazon recommends to me.  This usually works in my favor, though occasionally I am very disappointed with the recommendation.  At the outset of Skipping a Beat, I was convinced this book fell into the disappointed category.  The story is about a woman named Julia who is in her mid-30s. She has essentially gone from rags to riches, and is now living the life in her DC mansion.  Julia is (surpise!) an event planner (which seems to be the career of choice in women's fiction lately) who owns her own business, and her husband is also an extremely successful entrepreneur.  I pretty much wrote the book off immediately, thinking I could never relate to these characters, which is a MAJOR part of reading for me.  I am never one to give up on a book, however, so I gave it a chance.

The book opens with her husband going into cardiac arrest.  After being dead for 4 minutes and 8 seconds, he realizes he's done it all wrong, and wants to give all of his money away.  The rest of the story revolves around Julia's feelings in trying to reconcile a broken marriage when the gravy train is also coming to an abrupt halt.

Despite my original misgivings about Skipping a Beat, I quickly became really involved in the story.  Sarah Pekkanen created nuanced characters who have very real emotions.  Although some aspects of the book did require a suspension of disbelief, overall I was very satisfied with the development of the personalities, the feelings, and the ultimate resolution.  I was even a little surprised at times.  I plowed through this book in anticipation of the ending, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in character development.  I felt the story was untraditional, although perhaps it was simply unfamiliar to me as I usually read more frou frou literature.

Five stars!