His Love Revealed By Cynthia Herron

His Love Revealed
by Cynthia Herron
Publisher: Mountain Brook Inc.
Series: Welcome to Ruby
ISBN: 978-1943959914

Having not read any books by Cynthia Herron before, I was excited to join her launch team for His Love Revealed. She sent me her ebook for joining her team.

Summary:

Will revelations of the past hijack their future?​

Since childhood, Ida Mae Hoscutt, the beloved proprietress of the Come and Get It Diner, has loved Charles "Chuck" Farrow from afar. Now on the eve of her thirty-ninth birthday with no marriage proposal in sight, Ida Mae mourns past mistakes and contemplates a makeover. When a radio commercial wrenches Ida Mae's heart, will a sudden turn of events sabotage her chance for happiness or will a long-held secret be the answer to love ever-after?

As Ida Mae's right-hand man at the Come and Get It, Chuck yearns to shift gears and start over. He's ready to shelve bachelorhood and blunders in favor of possibilities and new beginnings. When he prepares to move forward, two things challenge his objective. One is the father who walked away and never looked back. The other? A decades-old question that only Ida Mae can answer.

And Ida Mae isn't talking.

My Review:

Oh Ida Mae. She is the main character in His Love Revealed. I liked her so much. She carries the weight of the world on her shoulders with a secret from her past. Speaking of the past she and Chuck go way back to childhood. The fact that they're not married yet is mind boggling. Not only to me, the reader, but also the entire town!

Speaking of Chuck, he's a nice fellow, but seriously slow to pull the trigger. Any trigger. He seems like a puzzle to be figured out, but as the story goes along, you begin to understand the choices he's made. Same with Ida Mae, and I just wanted to hug her throughout the entire story.

A lot of this story takes place in a relatively short period of time, but because of the history of all of the characters in the book, it all seems natural. Sometimes I read a story and I feel like things speed along too quickly, but where we find the characters of His Love Revealed along with how long they've all known each other, we seem to have stumbled upon Chuck and Ida Mae at the perfect moment.

There was such a wide range of emotions throughout this story. Heartbreak for what Ida Mae has been through, the pain Chuck endured as a child, sadness for where they both are in life and what's been missed because of the past, and so on. I do have to admit that I was seriously annoyed with Chuck towards the end of the story.

I have a fondness for stories written about little towns where everyone knows everyone's business. lol It's even better when those people are rooting for you!

I really really enjoyed this story and now have to go back and read book one. That way I'll be all caught up when book 3 comes out.

SPOILERS


Serious, don't read further unless you want to learn about a piece of the story that bothered me. Not because of the writing, but because I've humanized the characters. lol




Honestly, spoilers ahead...


Ok, so I'm not sure if this would actually be considered a spoiler, HA!

When Chuck comes face to face with his father who walked away, I felt like the father had zero respect for the pain Chuck endured. He keeps calling him, "Son," even when Chuck says he didn't have the right to call him that. I felt like his father needed to earn that right back after being gone for 20 years. Maybe it was 30 years. His father's response was, "Well, that's what you are so that's what I'm calling you." WHAT? I would've gotten up and walked away. hahahaha Chuck was much more kind that me.

See what I mean, I humanize the characters.

But the next part that frustrated me even more, which springboards from the one above, was when he walks away from Ida Mae after learning her secret. Um, the secret had nothing to do with him. His father, who walked away from the family for 30 years without so much as a howdy do, comes along and everything is just dandy? They're going to work on it? But Ida Mae confesses to something that happened to HER and he walks away? I wanted to knock his block off!

Characters can be such... fictional characters. HA!

About the Author:

Cynthia writes Heartfelt, Homespun Fiction from the beautiful Ozark Mountains. A hopeless romantic at heart, she enjoys penning stories about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. Her Hope Discovered, her début novel and the first in a three-book series, released December 2018 with Mountain Brook Ink.