Reviewer: rebecca_batteur

Author: authorendrazimmerman

Cover:

Your cover is quite simple, as it only shows us a close-up image of two indistinguishable faces and a title, without much more decoration. However, I immediately notice that this apparent simplicity hides perhaps something much more complex and much more interesting than it seems. Contrary to what one might think, a cover is not always made to dazzle us and immediately saturate our minds with a plethora of elements that we can hardly distinguish from one another. Some covers are, and should be, stripped down. This is how, on the contrary, they mark the spirits and transmit just as well the emotions that they seek to impress in the reader. Here, I have to notice the proximity to the faces of the two characters. The angle of view is very close to both of them, so that we can distinguish very little of their features, simply their faces side by side. This gives us, the reader, an omnipresent sense of intimacy with this proximity already established between us and the characters. To see them so close that their two faces could almost merge into one conveys the idea that they are one, that the story revolves around them, with no other element around, in the background. plan or elsewhere, to distract the reader from this powerful bond that we already feel between them. Even the title is quite discreet, as if it did not want to disturb this relationship spread out on the cover. The way it is displayed on the cover works very well, it is visible and crisp and the font used is pleasing to the eye.

Title:

The title seems to perfectly sum up this desire to center the plot around this couple. This title is simple but it explains the situation very well. This is our story, about us. Once again, we have here an idea of intimacy and also of closeness between the reader and the character of the story. This formulation, which, rather than saying "Their story", declares "The story of us", implicitly includes the reader in the story and the reader feels immediately involved. Presenting this work simply as "The story of us" can just as well mean a love story as a family story, but in both cases, we feel the bond that the two characters share and we feel unwittingly attached to them too. Blurb:

I think this summary is very well constructed, with the opening sentence briefly telling what happened without revealing more, just enough so that we can easily understand the stakes of the plot; then, the opposition between the two main characters of the story, Nora and Christian, each entitled to their short explanatory paragraph which sets up the basic principles of these characters as well as the great conflicts that they will have to overcome throughout history. I find that each of their paragraphs sums up very well and effectively who they are as people, what drives them to act the way they do, their main faults and their fears. The summary thus ends beautifully with a concluding question made to encourage the reader to continue reading beyond this promising taste. The question is well asked and expresses well what will be the driving force of the rest of the story. Overall it's a short and effective summary, I don't recommend any major changes, other than an error that I also often noticed during my reading. You forgot a space between the point and the beginning of your new sentence. This is only a minor error but I thought it would be good to point it out.

Plot:

This is clearly not the plot that is the most interesting to explore. It is not that it is non-existent, there are several interesting elements which are distilled here and there but that is not what matters most in this story. It is, of course, as one could have already guessed, the characters and their evolution. This is the whole theme of the book, the relationship that the two main characters will perhaps succeed in rebuilding. So I don't intend to dwell too much on the plot side because I don't have much to comment on that, it's well put together and always seems coherent and, above all, it stays to the side and doesn't come encroaching on the slow and interesting arc of character development with unnecessary twists and turns. The plot gives its characters time to breathe and evolve in their environment, between them, things progressing exactly as they should. I did not find too big flaws that could disconcert me and make me lose the thread of the story. However, I have much more to say about the characters and their various reactions to the events that arise. So I'm going to immediately go over to that side.

Characters:

Since this is the major constituent of your story, I have to spend time on it, and try to be very precise and meticulous. I will try to scan each of the characters, what works, what does not work. Luckily, to help me, there aren't many characters and that's a quality of this story, it won't overwhelm us with too many useless and useless characters. The only characters that we really follow are either the main ones or their entourage, which greatly contributes to their development. This helps keep the narrative simple and doesn't get the reader lost, guiding them precisely in one direction without ever deviating from it. Let's start immediately.

Nora, first of all, since she is the heroine of this story, the one we follow the most. Nora is interesting in the sense that she has suffered a lot, from her parents, who denied her, from the one she loved who more or less abandoned her, and from life in general, which never made anything better. She therefore finds herself alone with only her best friend for support, reduced to working as a stripper to get money, far from the long studies of psychology of her dreams. Nora's life has completely changed and it's all because of Chris. She has nothing left that she had before or that she could have wanted. She left everything for her love but, when she needed him most, he disappeared from her life, thrown in jail for refusing to give up his life of crime. All that's left for Nora is this son, Chris' legacy and his spitting image that still manages to lighten up her life a little. Early on, Nora's loving and merciful nature was established, who would give anything, do anything for her son and love him with an unconditional love worthy only of a mother, despite all the misery that surrounds her, the disrespectful men at her work or even on the street. We feel compassion for this young mother, without even fully knowing the circumstances that have brought her to this point, for whom every dollar counts and who feels guilty and sorry at the idea of not being able to offer the world to her son or simply a decent living environment. This character and her way of life are very well introduced however, I must say that I am quite skeptical about the way the reunion with Chris and the departure for New York are handled. I wish we had taken more time to study Nora's emotions as well as what made her finally accept Chris's proposal, despite everything that could have brought her to do otherwise. You indeed take a whole chapter to explain their relationship and, reading, one cannot help but think that

their love seemed based purely on a whim, without having thought for a single moment of the consequences and which quickly degenerated, with Chris who ended up in prison. As a reader, after Nora told us all this, this way she had of being a complete slave to her feelings, the couple's many arguments, we can only wonder what really pushes her to return with Chris. The true love argument seems a little weak to me in comparison to all the pain and sacrifice this relationship has brought her so far. It takes us a little more than that to feel like she has a real reason to go back to Chris. I would suggest making this relationship more complex, showing the different aspects it had, the happy times and the less happy times. The problem is that the reader doesn't see any reason for the two to get back together. Their short romance only led to immense problems and seems to have only been born thanks to the physical attraction they had for each other. That's one of the biggest problems I find with Nora's character: you don't understand why she likes Chris. No matter how hard I think about it, I find no exceptional quality in him that would justify such resilience from Nora in the face of each of his repeated mistakes. Apart from the fact that he is beautiful, I don't see anything that could lead to liking him. He does not respect her choices, does not listen to her, is jealous, possessive, impulsive in the extreme, only thinks of love-making, is a notorious criminal, sentenced for ten years for theft and attempted murder. No wonder he cares so much for Nora, she's the only one who would agree to live with him despite all his flaws!

Also, I found it a shame that Chris' return wasn't an opportunity for Nora to dive even deeper into memories to give us readers a better sense of her past. It would be precisely the moment to show us a few happy moments that she would have shared with Chris that could be the beginning of a justification for this sickly love that she has for him, based on nothing. She is very young, she was only in a relationship with him for a brief time before he was arrested and took her life in all directions. He was then absent from her life for three to four years. Their relationship was that of two teenagers, barely adults, even Nora admits they were driven more by their hormones than anything else. So why does such a strong bond remain between them?

It's not like there's no reason to find a good reason on both sides. It is mentioned very briefly that Nora's father is very unaffected and has been changed by his military career, making his home cold and impersonal. I think this is a very good way to build a dull and difficult family life for Nora who would finally find the happiness she is looking for alongside Chris, who also has a very strong sense of family. This reason may be indicated in the text but I think you should insist on it more in order to highlight it.

Finally, regarding their reunion, I find it inconsiderate and even selfish of Nora to go immediately with Chris leaving Riley alone in Chicago. Even if the reason why she agrees to leave everything for Chris was better explained, it does not justify leaving Riley like this, being her best friend who has always been by her side, supported her on every occasion, and did not hesitate to take her in and share her apartment with her. Riley also seems more attached to Caden, whom she knows much more than the latter's own father, it also seems cruel to deprive her of this child she helped raise, by keeping him on many occasions. Riley is thus left all alone, obliged to pay the rent with her only money when it does not seem to me that she has a fixed

job. But that point is never really addressed and we just find Riley's concerns about Nora and how Chris is going to treat her. Nora always seems to be at the center of it all, with Riley only playing the role of loyal friend without much of a backstory of her own (this isn't entirely accurate though, given her relationship with Jay which has recently come up, but it is still a little too minimal in my eyes).

I also have to say that I don't understand Nora's fairly constant remarks that she and Chris keep hurting each other. I find this statement to be false. She is the only one hurt in the relationship. Chris has everything he wants. A woman who stays at home to take care of her son, Nora, a mother ready to forgive him everything and take care of his son when he needs it, Talisa, money earned illegally... Nora does everything he tells him to do, she just berates him a little a few times but it's way too little, considering he rejects her and silences her as soon as she protests. He never focuses on her reproaches, except perhaps at the very end, but it is not without having mistreated her throughout the story.

Honestly, that's maybe one of the biggest flaws I could find in this story: I don't understand what you're trying to do with Chris. I can see that the main goal is to take him from this flawed version of himself to someone better. I fully understand this goal and it is a very commendable development. However, I think a big concern here that makes Chris so insufferable and why none of the readers like him is that only his flaws are highlighted. However, he has the potential to appear as a good person, even before he has changed. I think it lacks moments to show its true nature. In the end, he is someone devoted to his family but all the scenes we are shown lead us to hate him, until we no longer want Nora and him to manage to reconcile. I like this idea of a love that is not necessarily good and that needs to change, but I think that to establish a greater duality, Chris would have to be nuanced a little more. I'm not necessarily suggesting changing his actions, I think they work fine the way they are, but I think that, in the passages where we explore his point of view, it would be useful to add more details on this fear of the abandonment he might have, growing up alone with his mother, the idea that he deserves nothing, having been born in poverty, without always having enough to meet his needs, nor the possibility of studying. Nora is the only person who has seen beyond this superficial surface of unsavory street hoodlum. It must therefore be shown that there is indeed something to be found underneath. We can distinguish these things in history but they must be accentuated. Chris repeats several times how he refuses to lose this new family he has built, that he wants to offer the world to Nora and is ready to sacrifice everything for her (from his point of view at least, even if it is quickly established that he has a distorted view of reality). So, you have to remember to insist on his point of view. For example, when Nora has even a simple contact with another man, you could show the terrible hatred which surges but, above all, buried under everything, this fear, this terrible fear that she has realized what he thinks is the truth, which is that she deserves better than him and that she has decided to give him up. This theme is touched on a little during his argument with Alex but I think that having shown before that what Alex expresses is in fact a recurring fear of Chris would make Alex's words even more impactful because they would echo the greatest fear of Chris and would confirm to him that his worst nightmare belongs to reality.

Above all, in my opinion, Chris must appear as a broken man, who does not know how to love, totally out of step with life in society and, by extension, family life after his years in prison. A man who loves his family furiously but does not know how to behave with them. Showing several moments of vulnerability and doubt for Chris might help. For example, insisting that when he sees Nora getting upset, he does not understand why and he feels that something is wrong since he thinks he is doing everything right. I think that instilling in him a great misunderstanding would also help to make him more likable in the eyes of readers. He does not know how to live a normal life as a couple with Nora because he has always been used to solving his problems with violence and living a life where all relationships were of the dominant-dominated style. This violence that governs his life, coupled with his illegal work of intensive fighting, would explain why he does not know how to listen to Nora when she talks to him and tries to explain her problems and troubles to him.

And, once again, adding more happy moments would not hurt to prove that this couple can also be in harmony and complementary. As things are, we begin to pray that Nora will finally find common sense and leave this man who seems to have no other asset than his physical appearance. I think it would be beneficial to show the many sides of their relationship, as well as Chris's, so that the reader, like Nora, has a hard time deciding which side to be on.

Apart from these problems which troubled me a little, I must say that I find that the relationships between the characters are very well built. As I said before, the characters are endearing, touching and have the potential to reach the reader on a deep level. I particularly liked the maternal love between Nora and Caden. I find that all the affection that a mother can have for her child is very well rendered and makes us understand in part her motivations for staying with Chris even if, as I said, a little more explanation and a time when we see her hesitating and weighing the options in her head would have made her choice more plausible.

This family is endearing and one can only wonder how they will evolve and if they will finally manage to achieve happiness and stability. Where I am in the narrative, they are already heading in the right direction. It's a fun development to watch, but I think the fun would be increased if a little more attention was paid to Chris' character and point of view.

Pacing:

I find that the rhythm set up is pleasant, with short chapters that you can put on quickly. The events flow smoothly and I was not bored while reading. Some details, as mentioned earlier, deserve a little more time or attention but overall each part is handled as it should be. We are easily immersed in the story and the short chapters help reading, despite their high number. Writing style:

I don't have much to say about the writing style. It is of good quality, with several good descriptions. It works well with the theme of the story, so I wouldn't recommend a big change. The vocabulary used is consistent. To put it more simply, in relation to the ideas expressed, the style is of the same complexity and therefore conveys the themes of the story as it should. Once again, I would still like a little more introspection among the various characters.

Personal Enjoyment:

This story was very enjoyable for me to read, fluid and charming, presenting a rather refreshing tale about a family learning to live together again after conflicts have separated them. It's a sweet message and a book full of love that brings us the idea that it's never too late to try to change and get closer to loved ones. Love remains forever and always. I hope that this theme will continue to be developed by allowing Riley and Jay to pick up the pieces or even Nora to find her parents and finally make peace with them. This story is quite promising. I can only wish a happy ending to this tender adventure which lets us predict a peaceful existence for the various characters in the story.