Divine Freefall: 12/24/08

Divine Freefall (2000) was one of the first books I got through Bookcrossing. It sounded good to me (still does) but the execution of it just doesn't work for me. Maybe if I'd made the time to read it back in 2003 when I first had gotten it, I would have enjoyed it.

Melanie Dow is back at the family farm to settle her mother's estate. She comes across a young man performing a strange nightly ritual in the family barn and leaving daisies in a coffee can for her in the morning. A night of passion with the stranger forever changes Melanie's life.

My first problem I had was Melanie's motivation. She would act and think one way for a bunch of pages and then do an about face for the next couple for no apparent reason. Her friendship with Becka was too strongly based on whatever the ideal female friendship is supposed to be. In other words, Becka is introduced as Melanie's friend for talking about men and sex (or the lack of having any) and painting the nails and all that fluff. That's not real friendship. It's not believable and a terrible introduction for a character who ends up playing such an important role.

My last quibble with the book is purely cosmetic. The book uses some odd spellings and other odd grammatical things. It reads like it was written by someone who had heard the words and phrases but had never seen them written down. The most annoying of these in the novel is "Mam" for "Ma'am. " It's a colloquial version of madam and should be written as "Ma'am."

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