Guest Review: When Snow Falls by Brenda Novak

Posted October 23, 2012 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 0 Comments

Judith’s review of When Snow Falls (Whiskey Creek Trilogy #2) by Brenda Novak

After growing up in cheap motels, moving from town to town with her sister and mother, Cheyenne Christensen is grateful to be on her own. She’s grateful, too, for the friends she found once her family settled in California. But she’s troubled by the mystery of her earliest memories, most of which feature a smiling blonde woman. A woman who isn’t her mother.

Although Cheyenne has repeatedly asked for explanations, the people who could help aren’t talking. Cheyenne is set on finding answers, but without so much as a birth certificate, it won’t be easy.

Things get even more complicated when her closest friend is attracted to the man Cheyenne has secretly loved for years. For Eve’s sake, she decides to step aside — which lands her right in the arms of Dylan Amos, oldest and baddest of the hell-raising Amos brothers. He’s the kind of guy she’s sworn to avoid. She can’t afford to make a mistake, not when she finally has a chance to learn who she really is and change her life for the better. But . . . maybe there’s more to Dylan than she thought. Maybe letting him go would be a bigger mistake.

Set in a picturesque small community in Northern California, not really very far from Sacramento or San Francisco, this emotional and pain-filled novel examines the experiences of a woman who was introduced in the first novel in this series as a group of individuals who regularly get together for coffee, have grown into a close-knit group and who all went to school together in Whisky Creek. They are, for the most part, upwardly mobile and relatively successful. For Cheyenne Christiansen they are like family–like no group of people she has ever experienced before. They have been her stability and in accepting her have given her the only sense of worth she has had her entire life. Her mother is dying of cancer, her sister is a on-and-off drug user and irresponsible about most things, always needing money, yet trying to carry her load in helping care for their mother, a woman who has dragged them both through every conceivable social and emotional knothole. The stability and acceptance Cheyenne has found in Whiskey Creek is so important that even when she finds herself involved with a less-than-socially-acceptable man she waffles in her willingness to make their relationship public because she doesn’t want to lose the good opinion this group has of her. Yet in Dylan Amos she finds a kindred spirit, a man who understands her sense of loss in a way no one else ever has.

This book looks at the damage an unprincipled and self-centered woman causes, not only for her daughters but for the others whose lives she touches with her evil and her ability to hurt. That Cheyenne has any morality or any sense of the “normal” is almost a miracle. It is also a story that is written with such realism that the reader will feel deeply the sense of being “odd man out” with her mother and sister as she tries to deal with old but persistent memories no one will acknowledge or help her understand. The reader will also be deeply aware of the struggles in Cheyenne’s heart–the importance of keeping her best friend, the old “crush” she has on Joe but whose growing attraction she must deny because of that friendship, the desire to know what it is like to be sexually desirable as well as recognizing the sense that Dylan has that his growing love for Cheyenne has no hope of being returned. It’s a book that deals with real life during a period in this young woman’s experience when all her best friends are gone and she must finally make decisions about her own path forward. Her maturity and the way she deals with her struggles, her deep loyalty to her best friend and especially to her sister is truly amazing and makes this a story that won’t be easily forgotten. The action in this story takes place right around the Christmas holiday season and could justifiably called a “holiday romance.” However, it can be read at any time of the year and still be enjoyed just as much.

Brenda Novak has that knack of writing stories that get under your skin, that make a reader aware of a slice of life that we don’t often encounter. Her love scenes are full of heat and her lovers raw and gritty. In this story you also encounter a hero who has weathered his own dastardly storms and has had to find a way to live with betrayal and being abandoned by both his parents in favor of keeping his brothers together, of becoming their anchor and the center of their family when he was almost too young to know how to do that. His anger and hurt were overwhelming and his way of handling those issues weren’t socially acceptable, but he has matured and come full circle. He need’s Cheyenne’s healing love as badly as she needs his. Not too many authors feel secure in giving us heroes who “miss the mark” and who are “less than” what society deems acceptable. Even as he struggles with his own fear of Cheyenne’s rejection, his deep caring and his tender heart are pushing him to offer her support and comfort. He is, in every sense of the word, a good man.

I found this book to be another Novak winner and am delighted to have been able to read and review it. It is a book that really demands to be read and enjoyed and the story is one that will challenge any reader to move beyond our safe lives as we consider many in our society who long for the security of love and family.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.

The Series: