Lou Aronica

Gerry Rubato is struggling with the sudden, wholly unexpected death of his wife, raising their now four-month-old son by himself, and the aching absence of his much-loved daughter Tanya, seventeen years old, who ran away just a month before her baby brother Reese was born, and three months before her mother's death.

We meet Gerry and Reese as Gerry is returning to work, leaving his son for the entire work day for the first time since his wife Maureen's death. It's tough for him to do, but he show more knows it's necessary, and he hires the best baby-sitter available, and goes to work. Real life resumes for him.
Gerry works his way through the unsettling feelings of everyone worrying and treating him differently until they get used to him being back, and his boss's frustration and subsequent hostility when he won't leave his four-month-old son for a long weekend in order to be included--for the first time--in the company executives' annual retreat. The most unsettling experience of all, though, is developing a friendship with a woman newly added to his team.

Ally is smart, funny, attractive, and sympathetic to his loss without making him feel self-conscious. They chat, trade jokes, share ideas, and become friends. When they take the first steps toward moving their relationship outside the office though, Gerry panics. What kind of a man is he, interested in another woman just five months after his beloved wife of eighteen years has died?

He works through his panic, he and Ally move ahead, and he develops a new, stronger friendship with his late wife's sister Codie, even as he and Codie share their frustration at Codie's parents' refusal to come north and meet their new grandson. Running through the whole story is Gerry's concern for his missing daughter, who ran off with her twenty-year old boyfriend, dropped out of sight, and contacts him only by email sent through a remailer, to hide her location. Tanya doesn't know her mother is dead, because he has no way to get a message back to her. Gerry begins writing a journal, the things he wants to tell his daughter and can't.

This is a warm, sensitively told tale, written with grace and dignity. Gerry's emotions are real and human, and treated with respect. Everyone involved tries to do the right thing, which doesn't mean there is no conflict. There is plenty of conflict--the most important of which is within Gerry himself.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher. show less

I was sent a copy of Blue by Lou Aronica for review.

Blue is a YA fantasy that introduces us to a family that's been broken by a child's serious illness, divorce, and a loss of communication. Becky, daughter of Polly and Chris, battles her way through a horrible illness as a young child. Her father, Chris helps her through this time by helping her to create a fantasy world, Tamarisk, to mentally escape to. The details of this world they build together is amazing and I loved watching Becky show more discover all the games, creatures, smells, and sounds that she and her father created once she discovers that she can actually go to Tamarisk, that it, in fact, exists. Sadly, however, the real stress of dealing with this illness has caused Becky's parents' marriage to reach its breaking point and somehow Becky and her father lose that connection they had with each other as well as Tamarisk.

I didn't like the parents, Polly and Chris. Polly was an overbearing, hypocritical, controlling toad of a woman and Chris was a weak, pathetic, clueless mess of a man. These two were such perfect caricatures of so many divorced couples that I've seen, the power and control games that get played and nobody bothers to notice that the child gets caught in the middle and ends up lost and confused. Polly and Chris couldn't have been more true to life, and while I didn't really like either of them, I understood them and their place in this story. Their one redeeming quality was that they did genuinely love their daughter. Becky was such a brilliant character. The depth of friendship she shared with Lonnie, the easy relationship she had with step-father Al, and the hope she was always willing to reach for made me really connect with her. I loved reading the slow process of Becky's reconnection with her father and the surprise and delight Chris felt at having that communication with his daughter back again. It was beautifully written.

I absolutely loved this story. I was hooked from the very beginning and there wasn't a single point where I ever lost interest in what I was reading. The novel flows easily from one chapter to the next, the plot is clearly laid out, and while I figured out long before the ending where it was headed, it didn't take away from how much I enjoyed getting there.

I found only one fault with Blue, there were a couple of chapters about Gage, seemingly some sort of God-like being maybe. These chapters were a little awkward and confusing and personally I just didn't get it. But they were a very small part of the story and overall I loved this book so much that it didn't even matter that I didn't understand Gage.

Blue is definitely an emotional roller-coaster, with flawed realistic characters, an extraordinary elaborate fantasy world, and a plot that will tug at your heart strings, this novel is one that I will certainly read again. I hope that Lou Aronica returns to the world Tamarisk for future novels.

Rating 5- Amazing, beautiful touching story. show less

My father was first introduced to Aronica’s work through a Free Book Friday for the Nook, and as soon as he’d finished reading Blue, he urged me to do the same. I was a little more hesitant, my shelves already filled with books I hadn’t read yet and no time to pick up another one. But finally, as I started into book reviews and being serious about this side of my life, I finally took my father’s advice and had him LendMe the two books from his Nook.

I can’t say as I’ve ever been show more more pleased about a choice of reading material.

Aronica takes two very different worlds – the “real life” view of Connecticut and a family that’s falling apart, and the “fantasy” world of Tamarisk with a queen seated too young facing over a catastrophe too big – and meshes them together seamlessly. The narrator switches between Chris, an aimless man divorced (badly) from his wife and estranged from his daughter; Becky, Chris’ daughter who has more imagination than the next six people combined and is dealing with not only all the troubles that come with being a fourteen-year-old but also the remission of her leukemia; and Miea, the queen of Tamarisk by her early twenties and faced with the largest disaster her kingdom has faced in decades.

With so many plot lines, it seems like it would be easy to lose track of the narrative and what is happening where – but Aronica’s storytelling never lets you get lost. You wander with Chris, desperate to save his relationship with Becky even after his divorce sent a monkey wrench into its gears. We relive high school with Becky, who still after four years doesn’t understand what happened with her parents and just wants to make her way through her freshman year without remark. We mourn with Miea, as she grapples with the difficulties of being queen and making decisions she doesn’t – and can’t – entirely understand. And we flip between the three with ease.

And as the paths begin to intersect in ways that no one would have expected, it’s easy to sit in your armchair with a grin on your face, cheering them on every step of the way. I know that I did.

The fact that I personally sat down and devoured Blue whole in a matter of hours is testament to how superb the writing of this book is, and how well it draws the reader in and makes the world real in their mind. And though I can’t “darken” like Chris and Becky do in the book and find myself in one of my own fictitious worlds (or possibly not so fictitious…), I can certainly imagine how that might feel.

Definite five-star rating for both Blue, and its prequel, Until Again. Must-read, on both counts.

Until again, Mr. Aronica. I’ll be waiting for your next book. show less

Hugh Penders is back in Amber, CT for his first extended visit since his brother Chase's death because his father has had a heart attack. It isn't just that his parents need his moral support; his father Richard needs him to take over running the store--and hopes he will take it over permanently. Both parents are offended when he flatly refuses, and agrees only to run it until it can be sold.

Since he's been drifting for the ten years since Chase died, and has recently quit his latest job, show more there's no obstacle to his doing so except that he finds working in the card and gift shop incredibly dull. Eventually, though, he gets bored enough that he starts making changes in the store, changes he feels his father should have made years ago. He's also distracted by running into Iris, his brother's last and most serious girlfriend, a woman to whom Hugh was also attracted. As he and Iris renew their friendship, they both have a lot of emotional baggage to work through with regard to Chase, and it soon looms as an obstacle to any future they might have together.

I found it took me longer to get into this book than any previous work by Baron that I've read. Almost perversely, this was because he's very good at what he does: he very effectively captured Hugh's disconnected, drifting state, his failure to move on from the crippling shock of his brother's death ten years earlier. It was only as he started to engage again that I found it easier to connect with the story, and care what happened to Hugh, Iris, Richard, the store, and the staff who work there.

Once that happened, I couldn't put it down. It was, in the end, a wholly satisfying novel.

Recommended. show less