Book Review: Hurricane Season by Lauren K. Denton

Hurricane Season

by Lauren K. Denton

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Paperback: 352 pages

Publisher: Thomas Nelson 

From the author of the USA Today bestseller, The Hideaway comes another story of families and mending the past.

Betsy and Ty Franklin, owners of Franklin Dairy Farm in southern Alabama, have long since buried their desire for children of their own. While Ty manages their herd of dairy cows, Betsy busies herself with the farm’s day-to-day operations and tries to forget her dream of motherhood. But when her free-spirited sister, Jenna, drops off her two young daughters for “just two weeks,” Betsy’s carefully constructed wall of self-protection begins to crumble.

As the two weeks stretch deeper into the Alabama summer, Betsy and Ty learn to navigate the new additions in their world—and revel in the laughter that now fills their home. Meanwhile, record temperatures promise to usher in the most active hurricane season in decades.

Attending an art retreat four hundred miles away, Jenna is fighting her own battles. She finally has time and energy to focus on her photography, a lifelong ambition. But she wonders how her rediscovered passion can fit in with the life she’s made back home as a single mom.

When Hurricane Ingrid aims a steady eye at the Alabama coast, Jenna must make a decision that will change her family’s future, even as Betsy and Ty try to protect their beloved farm and their hearts. Hurricane Season is the story of one family’s unconventional journey to healing—and the relationships that must be mended along the way.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

… the battered gray school bus from Bankston Detention pulled up out front, and twenty teenage boys shuffled off, hormones and pent-up energy swirling around them like almost visible steam.

She smoothed her hands across the blanket, straightened the corners, and imagined the room holding two little girls after holding nothing but dreams and damaged furniture.

Jenna always hated icebreakers like this. They reminded her of the week in college when she lost her mind and thought she might actually want to join a sorority. Five grueling days of prim parties, saccharine conversation, and ridiculous icebreakers where one by one, girls explained through tears how their future happiness depended on having a certain arrangement of Greek letters tied to her name.

It’s what I do when these storms come in. I bake till the power goes off, then I eat. It keeps me calm. And fifteen pounds over my goal, but calories consumed during acts of God don’t count.

My Review:

Ms. Denton has gifted us with a stealthily crafted and slowly developing yet highly satisfying story with most of the action and progression of the narrative occurring within the major characters’ inner musings, memories, regrets, and observations.  Their exteriors were quiet and politely guarded, while their interiors were fraught with a myriad of concerns, tension, heartbreaking disappointments, and unspoken aspirations.  The writing was emotive and Ms. Denton took me into the story with her highly descriptive and lushly detailed scenes; I felt the pressure of the humid heat of the gathering storm as well as the crack of heat lightning, and I coveted their refreshing and lip-smacking lemonade and sweet tea.  The characters were multi-layered and complex, surprisingly gentle and sweet, and cleverly observant.  I enjoyed hitchhiking in their headspace although I now seem to be contending with an unusual impulse to dig in the dirt and plant something just to watch it grow.

Empress DJ

About Lauren K. Denton

Born and raised in Mobile, Alabama, Lauren K. Denton now lives with her husband and two daughters in Homewood, just outside Birmingham. In addition to her fiction, she writes a monthly newspaper column about life, faith, and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent. On any given day, she’d rather be at the beach with her family and a stack of books.

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