MAD ABOUT YOU

Sandra Kitt

0-451-19185-4

SIGNET

May 1999

(4) Wayne Jordan

Contemporary Romance

PLOT SYNOPSIS: 

REVIEW: 

Sandra Kitt’s FAMILY AFFAIRS, says Jayne Ann Krentz is “Poignant, intense, and emotionally compelling.”  These words express what makes Ms. Kitt’s newest release a wonderful appealing read.

The story of heroine, Gayla Patton, begins when as a teenager she become pregnant for Graham Wheland, the son of her mother’s employers.  Gayla is black and Graham is white.  When Graham announces his marriage to another woman, Gayla, devastated, runs away and has the child.

Years later, Gayla, a successful gallery owner, is involved with a wonderful man and content with her life.  While planning for a show at the gallery, Gayla’s assistant ropes in a controversial artist to replace another artist.  Unknown to Gayla, the artist is none other than David Alan Kinney, the young trouble boy her mother raised.  With David’s entry into her life, the perfect contented world Gayla lives in slowly changes.  She begins to recognize that the discomfort she feels when around David goes deeper than mere attraction.  She’s falling in love with him.  To complicate matters even more, Graham, on the verge of divorce, comes back into her life, and realizes that Allison is his daughter.

The above summary has the making of a soap opera, but in the talented hands of Ms. Kitt it becomes so much more.  FAMILY AFFAIRS is Ms. Kitt at her best.  It is a story about family, and the complex relationships that can occur.  Most of all, it is the story of Dak Kinney, an intense character who continues to be haunted by his past, but through his art is able to hope for a future. A silent brooding man, he is one of the best heroes Ms. Kitt has created.  The description of his work is so vividly that I not only felt the pain of his past, but was also able to look deep into the soul of a man who is searching for a family – and love.  In the end, Ms. Kitt not only gives him love, but the family he needs.  The novel’s closing words aptly sums this up:

It occurred to David as he watched Gayla and Graham, and Holly and Allison, just how lucky he was.  He was finally about to arrive at that complicated arrangement of relationships made up of surprises, skeletons, different colors and sizes; of steps and halves and firsts and seconds and long-lost and married into ... and called a family.

wayne@romanceincolor.net (1st May 1999)