Loving Annalise
by Gabriel Constans
After years of poverty, heartbreak, loss and betrayal, Tomas enters Annalise's world and shatters the iron casing she's erected around her heart. Tomas is kind, intelligent, romantic and handsome, but he's also her husband's brother!
Once Tomas and Annalise meet, they are forever intertwined and repeatedly ripped apart by fate, self-doubt and blackmail. Her husband, Jens, is a brilliant, jealous and manipulative scoundrel who keeps her psychologically under lock and key, until her passion for Tomas sets her free.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
“The valley
was known for its fertile ground and fertile women – having never quite moved
into the twentieth century, Catholic Krumjagen families kept producing children
like sheep. And, like sheep, the
children had a tendency to wander off once they were grown.”
“Herr Schmidt
taught first through fourth grade. His
clothes were always impeccable. If the
smallest wrinkle or tiniest speck of dirt ever landed upon His Grace’s attire,
they would have fled in terror and shame from his bloodcurdling gaze of
superiority. He seemed to pick on our
family with relentless joy.”
“I had a rabid
case of snow blindness, and I kept crawling up Mt. Illusion, ignoring all signs
of the impending avalanche.”
“‘Yeah, life,’
she smirked. ‘It’s a sexually transmitted
terminal illness that you’re infected with at birth.’”
“Denial is
quite compelling – a combination of thinking you’re in love and living in
hell. You keep your eye on the illusion
and pretend the fire burning your feet is the floor heater.”
“Let’s make
our own movie, a European version of It’s a Wonderful Life, without the
attempted suicide,”
My Review:
Loving
Annalise turned out to be so much more than I expected. It was a short yet superlatively written
story that entertained and held my attention from beginning to end. The story is narrated by Annalise - a woman
who is mulling over her rather tragic personal history. She tells her story with remarkable insight
and annotates with clever humor. At
times I wanted to smack Annalise for being a naïve moron and monumental coward,
but then remembered the culture she was living in as well as period of time she
was recalling, and neither were kind to girls/women. She was a mousey child of 7 who had been
bullied and viewed as an oddity, even in their small backward village of 79
houses, which maintained the cultural and religious attitudes of an earlier
century. As she lacked self-esteem and
assertiveness, she was easy prey and trapped in a loveless marriage and later
bullied and blackmailed by her unfaithful and emotionally vapid husband.
The humor was wily
and frequently had me smirking, and I will admit that I actually barked aloud
once and was still tittering several minutes later over her humiliating mistake
of English usage during a public bus ride, which continues to bring a chuckle
as I type out this review. Mr. Constans
use of metaphor is richly entertaining. The
writing was smart, absorbing, amusing, and occasionally sensual. I love a story with soul mates getting their much
deserved HEA.
Empress DJ
Gabriel’s Links:Website: http://www.gogabriel.com/index.html Twitter: https://twitter.com/GabrielConstans
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