Wednesday 28 October 2015

Review ~ Destiny's Plan by Victoria Saccenti



25804941
Magick Publishing
2015


Destiny has the final word.....

Raquelita Muro and Matthew Buchanan meet by chance on a Greyhound bus ride between Texas and Tallahassee. For both of them the journey is difficult and fraught with emotion. Raquelita is travelling with her difficult and irascible mother, Isobel, and her sweet younger sister, Marité, ostensibly, to make a new start, after her parent’s separation, and to stay with family in Florida. Matthew is travelling a very different path, a journey which will take him to Fort Benning and to deployment in Vietnam. The attraction between the gentle Raquelita and idealistic Matthew is instantaneous and they acknowledge that on some primal level, they have found, in each other, their soul mate.  

But all is not going to be easy for the young lovers, as fate has a nasty habit of intervening, and Raquelita’s abusive mother is disinclined to let Raquelita pursue a relationship with a young man of whom she knows nothing, and, of course, Matthew’s deployment brings with it a whole heap of worrying complications. The complexities of life for Raquelita and Matthew is explained well, you feel their angst and suffer emotionally as they face countless setbacks and difficulties. Isobel, on the other hand is manipulative and cruel, with her own complex relationship issues, which dominate throughout the narrative.

Overall, I think that it this is a commendable debut novel and when viewed as a whole, the story works very well, although there were times when I thought that the writing was perhaps a little over complicated, but, I put that down to the exuberance of the debut novel and a new author’s enthusiasm for description. What does come across, however, is the fine attention to detail and the obvious love the writer has for both her story and her characters. Destiny’s Plan is unashamedly romantic, but to counteract the sweetness, there is also the anguish of survival, the darkness of people scarred by hurt, and the deeper passion which comes from overcoming adversity. I liked how the story developed, there was so much to consider, not just about the pain and anguish of young love, but also the irresistible notion that, eventually, love can conquer all.

I am confident that as the Destiny’s Plan series progresses, the author will continue to go from strength to strength, and I will watch, with great interest, to see how this exciting series plays out.










Website

Twitter @VictoriaSAuthor




My thanks to the author for sharing her book with me.




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