Can't Help Falling

September 26, 2016
In her well-received debut, Close to You, Isaac tapped into the worlds created by J.R.R. Tolkien and a contemporary New Zealand tour of the sites associated with the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. This enchanting follow-up portrays an unlikely love story between a man and a woman who have much more in common than their shared interest in C.S. Lewis’s land of Narnia. Peter Carlisle is an injured Olympic-level rower struggling to get his life back. While looking for a birthday present for his mother, he opens a wardrobe in an Oxford antique store and discovers Emilia Mason, who is joining her mother’s search for Lewis’s fictional land. She came to Oxford in hopes of reinventing herself and atoning for a past mistake. While romantic sparks fly between Peter and Emilia every time they meet, the list of reasons that they should not be together is long; among other things, Peter is the board member overseeing Emilia’s work at SpringBoard, a charity devoted to getting books into the hands of poor children. The story’s faith elements are not overwhelming, but they underpin the burgeoning relationship between Peter and Emilia. Fans of Isaac’s debut will be thrilled that previous protagonists Allie and Jackson return as supporting characters. One need not be a Narnia fan to settle in and enjoy Isaac’s story, which romance readers will easily fall in love with.

Isaac (Close to You, 2016) follows up her Tolkien-obsessed debut with a second novel, for fans of C.S. Lewis.Emelia Mason wants to reinvent herself. She leaves behind a sordid past as a tabloid journalist in Los Angeles and moves to Oxford, England, in search of atonement after chasing a scandal that led to the death of a wealthy English socialite named Anita. With a new identity, Emelia gets a job with the charity Anita had founded, SpringBoard, determined to rebuild it after Anita's death. Emelia, feeding a love of Narnia since her childhood, is also obsessed with wardrobes. She climbs into one in an antiques shop and subsequently falls out of it at the feet of Peter Carlisle, an Olympic rowing hopeful who happens to be in the same antiques shop looking for the perfect teacup to give his mother for her 60th birthday. After a brief exchange about The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Emelia and Peter can't stop thinking about each other. It turns out Peter has his own connection to Anita and SpringBoard; Anita was his cousin, and he is on the Board of Directors of her charity. As Peter and Emelia begin working together on a fundraising ball, Emelia continues to hide the truth about her past as a tabloid journalist and her connection to Anita. This novel has its charms in its Oxford setting and its Narnia nerd-ism, but the plot relies too heavily on coincidence and then staggers along to an anticlimactic conclusion, lacking any of the magic, adventure, or tension of the classic novels it pays homage to. There is little chemistry between Emelia and Peter, making the novel feel less like an inspirational romance and more like a morality play. Though the romantic sparks never take off, this novel might be worth a try for fans of Narnia and romance. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.