CLOSE TO HER HEART (Book 3)

CLOSE TO HER HEART                       C J CARMICHAEL
Posted:  Sept. 15, 2014

Dani Carrigan, the academic of the Carrigan family, has always relied on logic when making important life decisions. But when she discovers she’s pregnant—and that there’s a chance her baby may be born “not perfect”—deciding what to do isn’t so easy.

It would help if the father, Adrian Carlson, department head at the University of Washington in Seattle where they both work, would pop the question. But the widower seems more interested in protecting his six-year-old daughter than committing to his new relationship with Dani.

The last time Dani felt so alone and scared was when she was sixteen and her mother died in an accident at their family ranch, leaving Dani to raise her younger sisters with precious little help from her distant and disapproving father. She felt so inadequate then. But is she any more prepared to be a mother now?

Support comes from an unlikely source. Dani always saw her next-door neighbour and friend, divorce attorney Eliot Gilmore, as a charming, handsome, playboy-type. But with each challenge Dani faces, from pregnancy, to delivery and beyond—Eliot reveals himself to be more of a man than she ever guessed. Is it possible that in all the years she’s known him, Eliot hasn’t been playing the field—but waiting for her?

MY REVIEW:

     Talk about intense.  This one had me in its grips from the very beginning.  Being a first time older mom my husband and I were faced with making the decision of whether to have amniocentesis or not.  Being we had been married 21 ½ years it was not like we’re going to return a defected child of God, that he gave us as a gift.  So for us, we opted not to have for fear I could lose our child.  She is a health 13 year old crazy like her mama. 

     So, to be Dani Carrigan, 34, PhD in Psychology, who was having or choosing, to make all these decisions alone was beyond me.  Fear can make you do a lot of things, even to the smartest of us.  Then, the mother instincts to protect this tiny being you haven’t even met yet is immense.   She did not get pregnant alone that was aided by her boss and fellow professor Adrian Carlson.  Who you could tell was playing her from the very beginning.  It was all about him, he was self-centered and he read her like a book, knowing she was needy.  So, when she tells him his reaction shouldn’t surprise me but in some ways it still did.

     She had her friends Miriam and Eliot were there for her since they knew that Adrian was such a tool.  They could tell he was playing the, “I’m a poor widowed single father torn and need a little love and understanding.”  Then Adrian shows his true colors.  See what happens and how his decisions shake up their happy trio. 

     You see there is a love triangle going on but with which characters?  You will have to read and find out.  Because Dani finds out that Eliot Gilmore from next door has more opinions for her about Adrian than she would like to hear and his not kind about it and why is that? I give this story 5 stars.  Provided by Net Galley.

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