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A TEST OF TIME Cheryl Faye BET/Arabesque November 1999 (4) by Melanie Schuster |
Contemporary Romance |
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PLOT SYNOPSIS: |
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REVIEW: |
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I always love it when a writer pushes the envelope.
I have to confess that I have mixed feelings about the push that Cheryl
Faye took in A Test of Time. I give
her a lot of credit for doing something daring and exciting…BUT!
I must say that I was taken aback a bit by her approach. Nicole John and Mark Peterson were the loving couple in A
TIME FOR US. They were an
admirable duo, well matched in temperament and style and you just had to root
for them all the way. They were so
classy and mature and when they committed to one another, you just sighed with
delight and knew it was true eternal love.
Well, stay tuned dear reader. In A TEST OF TIME,
the thrill, as B.B. King would sing, is gone.
Despite the fact that they are married, have a love baby daughter and
every material thing they could possibly desire, things go awry.
A series of heinous misunderstanding leads to separation, arguments,
preparations for divorce, and every other gloomy thing under the sun. On the one hand, this is how things sometimes happen in
real life. More often than not you
see couples who start out with everything in the world going for them ending up
in divorce court. Lack of
communication, lack of quality time, loss of focus, all these things can lead
couples to the precise point where Mark and Nicole were in A
TEST OF TIME. On the other hand, though, these two were so caring with
each other so loving and so mature that this was totally unexpected.
It was almost like reading about another couple entirely.
But despite that, Ms Faye does an admirable job of depicting a marriage
in trouble. It wasn’t that I did
not believe the turmoil—it was all too realistic at times.
There were times when I wanted to shake Mark, then Nicole, and then the
both of them! You don’t get a
strong reaction like that from a novel unless the author has done her job very
well. This book has been exciting a lot of lively discussion, which I think is wonderful. Nothing is more exciting than the book that makes people sit up and take notice, and A TEST OF TIME is doing just that. Ultimately, it is always up to the reader. Grab this book from the bookstore, the library or ‘borrow’ your girlfriend’s copy and dig in. I guarantee you it will leave you with something to think about, something to talk about and something to savor. And that in itself is A TEST OF TIME! |
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3rd December 1999 |
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