About the Book
It’s summertime on the North
Carolina coast and the livin’ is easy.
Unless, that is, you’ve just lost your mother to cancer, your
sister to her extremist husband, and your husband to his executive assistant.
Meet Gray Howard. Right when Gray could use a serious infusion of good karma in
her life, she inadvertently gets a stranger, Diana Harrington, fired from her
job at the local pharmacy.
Diana Harrington’s summer isn’t off to the greatest start
either: Hours before losing her job, she broke up with her boyfriend and moved
out of their shared house with only a worn-out Impala for a bed. Lucky for her,
Gray has an empty guest house and a very guilty conscience.
With Gray’s kindness, Diana’s tide begins to turn. But when
her first love returns, every secret from her past seems to resurface all at
once. And, as Gray begins to blaze a new trail, she discovers, with Diana’s
help, that what she envisioned as her perfect life may not be what she wants at
all.
In her warmest, wisest novel yet, Kristy Woodson Harvey
delivers a discerning portrait of modern womanhood through two vastly different
lenses. Feels Like Falling is a beach bag essential for Harvey fans—and for a new
generation of readers.
My Review
I have read from Kristy Woodson Harvey in the past, and her novels just get me. From cover to characters, I feel a draw to her work. Feels Like Falling was no different, and I eagerly jumped into the setting of a North Carolina summer and two very different women forming an unexpected friendship. Gray is a successful entrepreneur, who is struggling after losing her mother to cancer and her husband moving out days after the funeral. Not only is Gray mourning the loss of her mother and her marriage, her ex-husband is trying to take half of her business that she solely built – and she’s trying to hold it all together for her young son. Diana has had the opposite upbringing of Gray, and finds herself barely able to make ends meet and gets fired after a disastrous run-in with Gray in front of her boss. Diana is shocked when Gray offers her a job and a place to stay in her guest house, and doubly shocked when her old boyfriend shows up and wants to give love another chance.
The two women are so different, with vastly different paths in life and struggles they are trying to overcome, but both felt incredibly relatable and I was rooting for them both to get a happy ending. With Gray, I simply had a good time watching her try to date again – with her son’s young tennis instructor at that! Her back and forth dilemma of what’s appropriate and what’s not – and the society double standard that her husband could leave her for a much younger woman was okay but her dating a younger man was scandalous – kept me guessing until the very end of what her decision was going to be. Diana’s story felt deeper – a family torn apart after their mother’s disappearance and no father on the scene, a brother with special needs, no job, an overdrawn bank account and another failed relationship – and I loved her spirit. While she may have come off a little manipulative in the beginning, I actually found her to be such a sweet character and I felt myself hoping chapter through chapter that she could find happiness in the end.
If you haven’t read a novel from Kristy Woodson Harvey yet, I highly recommend you do. She writes relatable women’s fiction with strong female characters and beautiful Southern settings, and Feels Like Falling is another win for me.
5 stars
