This week we are looking at the conclusion of the most recent series from a well known romance author. This week we are looking at The Wonder of Now by Jamie Beck.
I titled the Amazon/Goodreads/ Bookbub review of this one “Arrival To Earth” for a few reasons. This is a book about the journey of two cancer survivors – one who survived a personal battle with breast cancer, and another who watched a parent battle brain cancer. And while I have very little direct experience with breast cancer, I actually knew a man just a few years ago who watched his wife quickly die from an aggressive brain cancer, and I actually knew him in the couple of years after this. From what I saw of that man, Mitch seems very well defined as a character in that type of position. Peyton’s struggles here seem very real in all regards.
It combines to produce a romantic drama of intense struggle against seemingly overwhelming odds, and yet having an indelible hope that things will some day be better – exactly as the Steve Jablonsky-penned “Arrival To Earth” score, which plays in the first Transformers movie just as the Transformers are first coming to Earth. Its climax is when Optimus Prime explains the backstory of the Transformers, and it was the song playing through my head through much of the back half of this book. It doesn’t hurt that it has a near direct tie in that I’ll leave out of this review. 🙂
Truly an excellent book and one of the more stark and yet also real looks at cancer I’ve yet seen in fiction. Very much recommended.
As always, the Goodreads/ Amazon review:
Arrival To Earth. In this satisfying conclusion to Jamie Beck’s Sanctuary Sound series, we get the book we’ve been waiting about a year for – Peyton’s story. And as she has done with each book in this series, Beck does an excellent job of showing the central traumas – in this case, both characters having differing experiences with cancer – in all their complexities. Truly an excellent work, but you’re going to want to read at minimum Book 2 to really get everything from this one. Very much recommended.