Marlies Schudlach Perez's 47 DESTINIES (Book 2): DISCOVERING GRACE is a novel about daring to overcome fear and the negative influences of others. I give it two stars for its theme and message, which are appropriate for our 21st Century lives, but recommend major revisions to streamline and clarify the plotline.
In 47 DESTINIES: DISCOVERING GRACE, Grace Ann Locke has protected herself from hurt by keeping her late husband Derek alive in their house. She still wears her ring and meditates on his death daily, even though he has been dead for several years. Unfortunately, Grace's family, mother-in-law Leslie and soon to be sister-in-law Cora, think it is time for Grace to start dating again.
After several disastrous dates, Grace chucks the idea of dating, and just when she thinks she is out of the woods, she falls in love with Todd Harcourt, one of Cora's old flames. Between the meddlesome and often rude family, the appearances of Derek's ghost, and one character's surprise health issues, Grace and Todd have to figure out how to be together.
As with the first book in this series, I liked the theme of 47 DESTINIES: DISCOVERING GRACE. It is true that fear can cause personal stagnation as well as familial problems, and it is nice to see the encouragement to break free of that fear in everyday reading. Unfortunately, the theme is where my commendation ends, as the illustration of that theme needs major work to be credible.
One of the main issues troubling this novel is the incredible glut of narration and how it holds the book hostage to a glacial pace. While having descriptions of people's clothes or the places they visit is helpful for the reader to form a mental image of a scene, it is often possible to work the important details into dialogue that actually moves the plot along, without causing the pace to suffer. If a character's shirt color isn't necessary to illustrate a character or isn't connected to the plotline, it should be left out. After the fifteenth shirt color, the reader couldn't care less about what the character is wearing.
In certain situations, Grace explains the history of a place to her scene companion. A few times, the companion will comment on her unusual propensity to know the detailed history of a place, which acknowledges and illustrates her quirky character. In other parts, the novel reads like a travel guide--dry, overly instructive, and irrelevant. Travel guides have a different purpose and audience than fiction, and the writing style should be appropriately different. I felt hindered by the minutiae at every page turn and found myself wanting to skip whole paragraphs of narration just to get to the relevant dialogue.
The narration was also full of repetitive hyperbole. Yes, this is a romance; so some discussion of the characters' feelings is appropriate, but there were so many points where the narration felt trite and insincere. I believe that Todd and Grace fell in love, but that was because of the dialogue and the length of time they knew each other, not because of how the narration spelled out in painful detail how Grace hadn't been "alive" before she met Todd.
Aside from the superfluous narration, this novel has the same issues as the first novel with the stiff narration and overly proper dialogue that would flow so much smoother if contractions and pronouns were used. There were also serious inconsistencies with the scene setting, characters' actions, and timeline that were distracting and confusing.
Overall, I did not enjoy 47 DESTINIES: DISCOVERING GRACE, and I hope that these issues are taken into account when performing final edits of the next book in this series.
**Review originally written for The Romance Reviews.com at http://www.theromancereviews.com/viewbooks.php?bookid=10240.
