Reviews for Home Before Dark

The average rating for Home Before Dark based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-30 00:00:00 James Barnhart At first I was thoroughly enjoying this book despite being slightly annoyed by the main character Jessie. She was narcissistic and selfish but she did grow throughout the book and I came to like her. There were two points that really bothered me though. And bothered me enough to drastically affect my enjoyment of the story. First, the insta-love. After grieving for your dead wife for years, within a day you fall in love with a woman you just met and want to marry her. A tad bit unbelievable and it quite annoyed me. And then the ending. Really? That's how it's going to end? Talk about leaving you hanging...

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-07 00:00:00 Kastoras Kastorakis I rarely read two books by the same author one after the other but these were in the same volume, so, having loved The Goodbye Quilt, I turned straight to Home Before Dark. For me it was a mistake. Whether it was me or the book is debatable. Initially this story was written 8 years before The Goodbye quilt. Could that be the problem or was it that I didn't relate to the characters in this one as well as the other story. The story has a lot going for it. It is the story of Jessie who, as a single young mother, handed her child over to her sister Luz to raise. Sixteen years later with only emails and phone calls in between, Jessie arrives at her sister's place and you just know that is going to cause trouble. Here is where I ran into problems. To me, Jessie was selfish, thoughtless and never considered anyone else's feelings. As for Lila, the daughter, all I can say is I am glad I never had a child like that. It certainly does raise some issues about whether the truth is always the best for all concerned, the timing of telling children they are adopted, and the behaviour of teenagers who think they are invincible and who never think of the consequences of actions. Some actions in this story have severe repercussions. These were the things that kept me reading even though I did not like Jessie or Lila much. Luz, on the other hand was, at times, too good almost to be true and yet underneath she carried her own resentment for opportunities lost. Still, she was my favourite character. There is romance and Dusty is a man who has suffered his own heartbreak. Even given the issue Jessie was facing, which I won't disclose here, I struggled to see what he saw in Jessie. But who can tell what attracts one person to another? And if someone had taken my child and helped her get a tattoo without permission, I would have blown a gasket. Jessie says herself afterward, 'She hadn't been thinking. It was always that way with her. She'd been governed by impulse rather than caution.' And then she is surprised when Luz was angry! The plot covers a lot of issues. Although there were things I liked and I admit to getting a bit misty eyed at times, as the story progressed, I also got angry and frustrated with the characters. the sudden conversion of Heath, Lila's boyfriend for part of the novel, never struck me as realistic and neither did the behaviour of others in the supposed Christian group of teens. All in all a good read but just not quite as good as I was expecting. Not the cover I had which has The Goodbye Quilt as the first story.See my review of it for the right cover.