REVIEW: Somewhere Between Luck and Trust by Emilie Richards

Once again you’ll become immersed in the mountain community of the GODDESSES ANONYMOUS series that includes unusual characters who need a bit of luck after all they’ve survived. Emotionally riveting, this is contemporary women’s fiction at its best, facing difficult situations with hope and love.

Somewhere Between Luck and Trust by Emilie Richards
Series: Goddesses Anonymous, Book 2
Category: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA (Available Jun 25 2013)
ISBN: 9780778314516
Rated 4.5 out of 5 Stars
Book courtesy of Netgalley and Review courtesy of Romance Junkies.

After spending eight months in jail for a crime she didn’t commit, Cristy Haviland is afraid of how she can possibly move forward. Pregnant when she entered lockup, she has never held her baby boy, preferring to let him go to her cousin’s home to be nurtured. Now that she’s out of jail, Cristy needs to decide what she’s going to do with her life, where she’s going to live and how she’s going to care for a baby. All while trying to overcome the memories of her time behind bars and the man who put her there. Besides the obvious obstacles, Cristy also has to overcome her inability to read, something she has kept secret. How will she manage a new beginning?

A principal at an alternative school for middle and high school students, Georgia Ferguson has more obligations than hours in the day. She’s determined to make her ideas for this school work, even if it means letting some of the desperately needed teachers go. What little spare time she has leftover is spent with her daughter Samantha and her granddaughter Edna, plus her best friends, the newly formed anonymous goddesses. When a charm bracelet is left on her desk and Georgia realizes it may be a way to track down the dishonorable mother she never knew, she wonders if she should just leave well enough alone. After all, the woman had cared so little that she had left Georgia in a sink at the hospital the day she was born.

The anonymous goddesses, as they call themselves, were given the Goddess House by their good friend Charlotte Hale with instructions to use it to help women. Samantha decides that they should help Cristy by letting her stay at the Goddess House until she can figure out her future. It’s a cabin perched in the mountains with plenty of room for gardening and self-reflection. Cristy and Georgia are both struggling with pasts they’d love to forget and they instantly connect when Georgia volunteers to teach Cristy to read. A new friendship, based on need, becomes something much more than either woman could hope for as they travel their individual roads of discovery. When they both meet men who could possibly be their life partners, will they allow themselves to love again, knowing the pain that could result?

If you haven’t read the first book in the GODDESSES ANONYMOUS series by Emilie Richards, I highly suggest you do that before reading SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LUCK AND TRUST. Book one, ONE MOUNTAIN AWAY, sets the groundwork for the friendships explored further in book two. I think you will understand this book without reading the first one but book two will mean much more to you if you’ve enjoyed book one. Besides, ONE MOUNTAIN AWAY is such an amazing book, so you don’t want to miss it—read my review here.

In book two we get to revisit with Reverend Ana, Harmony and her baby, Samantha and Edna, while getting a glimpse of Taylor and Maddie. There are a whole new group of characters to know and love as they gather to support Cristy and Georgia in their healing process, including two handsome men for them to lean on when the going gets tough, and it does get very tough, even dangerous, before these two women find their peace. My favorite new character is Dawson Nedley, a junior in Georgia’s high school, who is struggling between who he is and who his parents expect him to be. A gifted student, Dawson added some very touching moments and I can’t wait to find out where his life leads him in the future.

SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LUCK AND TRUST is a beautiful, almost five hundred page, book that exemplifies the best qualities of contemporary women’s fiction. Although there are two romances in this book, the characters don’t depend on the romance for their happiness. This novel is about friendships and trust, sorrow and fear, happiness and deserving it, with healing woven amongst it all.

Emilie Richards makes you care for her characters before you’re sure how it happened. This series delves into some difficult subject matter without apologies, diving in full force with the emotional upheaval caused by circumstances beyond the characters’ control. It’s like taking the characters and dropping them off a cliff, then waiting to see if they land on a ledge partway down, hoping to crawl back up or be rescued. You’re never quite sure what will happen next, often fearing the worst, but always glad at the end that everyone is moving toward a happy-for-now.

For a riveting journey through a mountain community where good friends support one another no matter what, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LUCK AND TRUST will rattle your emotions and in the end, make you smile.

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