Somebody's Baby

May 1, 2017
Since Sloan Gabriel won an American Idol-like reality show, her lifelong dream of fame and fortune has come true.In the all-white world (save an Asian doctor) of McDaniel's latest, 23-year-old Sloan is country music's rising star. Her future is bright, and she refuses to look back at her old life in Windemere, Tennessee, where she grew up fatherless and with an alcoholic mother. Unfortunately, it appears Windemere won't let go. When Sloan receives a letter from Lindsey Sloan Ridley, a woman who claims to be her half sister (Sloan was their father's surname), she finds herself back in that rural Tennessee town. Lindsey is a cheerful and "courageous" stage 4 cancer patient who grew up with their famous musician father, and she can give Sloan some insight into his motives for leaving Sloan and her mother when Sloan was little. Also in Windemere, Sloan reconnects with Dawson and Alana, two old friends with whom she shares a painful past (a past referred to time and again and covered in full in Losing Gabriel, 2016). Before long, Sloan is forming a deep familial bond with Lindsey and Lindsey's young son, Toby. She also fights her burgeoning lust for Lindsey's neighbor, the ruggedly irresistible EMT Cole Langston. Major drawbacks include loads of back story, a narrative heavily marred by jarring switches in the third-person perspective at the paragraph level, and the conflation of alcoholism and "sleeping around" with poverty-stricken trailer-park life. Still, there's no denying McDaniel's command of her material. Standard inspirational romance by a genre master. (Fiction. 13-17)

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June 1, 2017

Gr 8 Up-In this sequel to Losing Gabriel, Sloan's country music career has taken off. After winning a singing competition, she leaves behind the bad memories of her small town of Windemere only to be called back by a mysterious claim that she has a half sister. Without strong family ties of her own, Sloan sneaks away from her busy production schedule to meet her potential sibling. What she finds is a terminally ill cancer patient and her seven-year-old son, who are cared for by a family friend and a good-natured, handsome neighbor. Constantly pulled between her new career and her relationships in Windemere, Sloan must decide how involved she wants to be in the lives of people in a town she has worked hard to forget. Readers don't need to be familiar with Losing Gabriel to appreciate this title. The plot moves along at a steady pace, and the romantic tension between Sloan and love interest Cole is palpable. Secondary characters Lani and Dawson are somewhat two-dimensional, and the resolution to some of the more significant plot points are either void of characters' emotions or neatly skipped over. However, the story is engaging and leaves readers curious about the conclusion. VERDICT Hand this occasionally overwrought novel to McDaniel's followers or fans of the first installment in the series.-Lynn Rashid, Marriotts Ridge High School, Marriottsville, MD

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