Here in Toronto, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping and the sun sets at 8:45pm. What does that mean? Summer is officially here and to kick off the season, I wanted to read an author that’s one of my guilty pleasures and that I categorize into my summer reading list- Elizabeth Berg. She’s written many books, but her newest book, “Once upon a time, there was you“, was probably the best one I’ve read by her in a long time.
When I first started reading it, I thought it had a lot of mystery elements tied into it, but it turned out that wasn’t the case. Let me explain, Elizabeth Berg is fairly well-known for creating stories and characters that are well-developed and deal with real life situations that we all face on a daily basis. This is the story of middle-aged Irene, her ex husband John and their daughter Sadie. Sadie is the light in both of their eyes, at eighteen years old, she’s mature, polite and above all she continues to make them both proud everyday with all her accomplishments. That’s why they are both are shocked when Sadie goes off the path of righteousness and makes a decision to do something so drastic and unlike her that it pulls both Irene and John closer together.
Irene and John don’t communicate effectively for many reasons, so when they are forced to find common ground and be rational, it becomes quite the feat. In their marriage, there were a lot of pitfalls and the story actually begins at their wedding, where both of them are thinking of bailing because they know in their heart of hearts that they aren’t a good fit. Over the years, their marriage begins to crumble, the lowest of lows is that they can’t even say the words ‘I love you’ to one another. Needless to say, their views and opinions about the institution of marriage are tainted.
At the core of this novel is the word love and what that word means and how it’s distributed to one another. It’s a touching story that forces old feelings to be reevaluated and redetermined. I throughly enjoyed it and would have loved reading it on a beach with a cocktail nearby, instead of having to read it on transportation. Oh well, in soon time…. in soon time.
What are books you have set aside for your summer reading?
