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Linda’s Book Obsession Reviews “After Happily Ever After” by Leslie A. Rasmussen, She Writes Press, 2021 On Tour With Suzy Approved Book Tours
Leslie A. Rasmussen, Author of “After Happily Ever After” has written a riveting, captivating, heartfelt, memorable, and thought-provoking novel. The Genres for this story are Domestic Fiction, Family Fiction, Women’s Fiction and Fiction. The timeline for this story is set in the present and goes to the past when it pertains to the characters or events. The author describes her characters as complex, complicated, confused, and flawed. I appreciate that the author discusses important contemporary topics such as Alzheimers, and dementia, and recognizing problems of the senior population and how it affects their families and society. Leslie A. Rasmussen also discusses family dynamics, grandparents, parents, adult children, coming of age children, and the happiness and problems.
As people go through different stages, their problems are different. As the characters get older, the values change, and sometime they really don’t communicate or know what they really want. In this novel, Maggie Dolan is 45 years old, and her daughter Gina is going to be going off to college. Maggie’s husband seems to be indifferent and distant from her. There seem to be secrets. Maggie is in the “sandwich” generation, and struggles with visiting her Dad, who is in an assisted living facility, and dealing with her Mother, who constantly finds fault with her. Gina has a boyfriend, and doesn’t want to talk about him. Now Maggie needs something more in her life to make her feel validated.
I appreciate the writing style of the author, which vividly describes the characters and their anxiety, ambivalence and their actions. The author mentions the importance of family, communication, honesty, love and hope. I would highly recommend this novel to others.
Linda's Book Obsession: 