A woman learns to follow her own road in this heartwarming novel inspired by The Wizard of Oz by New York Times bestselling author Virginia Kantra.
Dorothy “Dee” Gale is searching for a place to belong. After their globe-trotting mother’s death, Dee and her sister Toni settled with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in Kansas, where Dee attends graduate school. But when Dee’s relationship with a faculty member, a bestselling novelist, ends in heartbreak and humiliation, she’s caught in a tornado of negative publicity. Unable to face her colleagues—or her former lover—Dee applies to the writing program at Trinity College Dublin.
Dee’s journey to Ireland leads her to new companions: seemingly brainless Sam Clery—who dropped out of college and now runs a newsagent’s shop—is charming and hot, in a dissolute, Irish poet kind of way; allegedly heartless Tim Woodman—who stiffly refused to take back his ex-fiancée—seems stuck in his past; and fiercely loyal Reeti Kaur, who longs for the courage to tell her parents she wants to teach underprivileged girls rather than work in the family business.
In a year of opportunities and changes, love and loss, Dee is mentored by powerful women in the writing program, challenging her to see herself and her work with new eyes. With her friends, Dee finds the confidence to confront her biggest fears—including her intimidating graduate advisor, who may not be so wicked after all.
Faced with a choice with far-reaching consequences, Dee must apply the lessons she’s learned along the way about making a family, finding a home…and recognizing the power that’s been inside her all along.
This was a novel I thought I would enjoy more than I actually did. I was rooting for Dee when she decides to hightail to Dublin after heartbreak – with a faculty member at her school, no less. She was clearly wronged and in a classic case of defending a man instead of making him look at his erroneous ways, and I wanted her to get the happiness (and credit) she was deserving of. When she reaches Dublin I got a little lost. We do have a love triangle of sorts happening between Sam and Tim, two very different men, and I was curious which guy she would pick. Neither seemed to be a stellar choice for her but the back and forth kept me entertained. The secondary cast plays a nice supporting role – from her sister to the characters she meets in Dublin, but no one really jumped off the pages for me. It was smooth reading but didn’t necessarily draw me in to keep reading page after page. The ending was nice but the book wasn’t the most memorable for me.
3 stars
