The Life Intended

November 1, 2014
Harmel (The Sweetness of Forgetting, 2013, etc.) takes on relationships, family and loss.Twelve years ago, Kate Waithman's husband, Patrick, died suddenly in a car accident. Now 40, Kate has never truly recovered, but she has managed to make a decent life for herself. She's an established music therapist for children, she has the emotional support of a best friend and a close sister, and she's even poised to move on romantically, accepting a proposal from her good-on-paper boyfriend, Dan. But the night of their engagement, Kate has a dream about Patrick so vivid and uncanny that it's clear-at least to her-that she's experiencing the life she would have led had Patrick lived. Subsequent dreams introduce her to a daughter, a lovely, deaf piano prodigy named Hannah. Suspecting that Hannah may exist in real life, Kate compulsively begins to search for clues, signing up for a class in American Sign Language, volunteering with deaf foster children and throwing her existing life into turmoil. Dan is less than understanding, though she tells him little. Her other loved ones question her choices as well as her sanity, and Kate is torn. Have the dreams awakened her long-dormant gut instincts, her desire for a more robust happiness? Or is she simply too eager to exchange the normalcy of the present for the glow of the past? After a loss like hers, how much should be thrown away and how much kept in the rebuilding? Tensions around these questions add to the mystery of the dreams themselves to make for an absorbing read. Though elements of the plot are predictable and the prose is unadorned, this book is well-paced and warmhearted.

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December 1, 2014

Twelve years after losing her husband Patrick in a drunk-driving accident, Kate Waithman is ready to move on and get remarried. Or is she? She still feels stuck in the past and the feeling worsens as she begins to have realistic dreams of the life she would be living if her husband hadn't died. At first Kate is obsessed with the dreams, which scares both herself and her friends and family. Eventually she admits the visions are just her imagination even though the connections to reality are hard to ignore. These connections lead her to believe the reveries are messages from Patrick. Trying to decipher her dreams as she searches for a better life, Kate learns sign language, helps kids in the foster-care system, and explores adoption. These radical changes compel her to stop looking back and start moving forward. Harmel (The Sweetness of Forgetting) hooks the reader from the start with this evocative novel and creates a believable world and despite some predictability, offers enough unexpected events to build to a satisfying conclusion. VERDICT Recommended, especially for fans of Cecelia Ahern's PS, I Love You.--Amy Stenftenagel, Washington Cty. Lib., Woodbury, MN

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
Music therapist Kate Westhoven's husband, Patrick, died more than a decade ago, and she believes she is past the intense mourning phase. Yet, even as she accepts her boyfriend Dan's proposal, she feels as though she is living a life she wasn't meant to have. When she starts having dreams in which Patrick is alive and they have a preteen daughter, the intense realism of these night visions drives her to search for meaning in her real life. She enrolls in a sign language class and becomes friends with Andrew, the social worker who teaches it. With his encouragement, she begins working with hearing-impaired children in the foster system, and this opens her to the possibility of becoming a parent. The latest from Harmel, author of The Sweetness of Forgetting (2012), is an affecting tale about finding happiness amid grief and guilt. Some twists are telegraphed early in the novel, but that doesn't diminish the satisfying conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)