Love Fortunes and Other Disasters by Kimberly KaraliusMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I won a set of Swoon Reads titles in 2015 in their Swoon Reads NaNoWriMo Sweepstakes after winning NaNoWriMo (wrote 50,000+ words). With my continued problems with reading comprehension from my brain injury, despite my intentions, I didn't get to reading any of them until this one now.
To recap: I underwent the Lindamood-Bell Visualizing and Verbalizing Program to regain my reading comprehension about a year ago. 2019, and continuing in to 2020, has been about finding books to practice my regained skills on.
I'm writing this review on 11 April 2020 . . . why did I wait so long? Looking at the date, I had a lot of fatigue and no recovery time. COVID-19 self-isolation has given me time to regain some of my energy. So let's see how much I remember!
In my usual style, I picked this book off the top of my Swoon Reads pile without reading the back cover copy, so I didn't realize that there is an element of fantasy. Well, the whole thing takes place in a world like Earth where charms are real, and love is a being. What I really liked about this book is it showed me how much I'd progressed in my reading. I remembered the Prologue the whole way through the book, which allowed me to work out the mystery of Zita as the plot unfolded. And I figured out who love was, too! But I didn't see the fullness of what love does until the author revealed it in the final scenes. It was interesting, and about the only part of this book that makes one sit back and think about love and the many ways it transforms us.
The main character, like the one in the book I'd read just before this one, also feels herself not in tune with her family. But in this case, she thought she was, that she was treading a time-honoured path her family had, and then, a love fortune rocks her assumptions, and she is flung off her family path. Fallon wants to hide this news from her family, even though she doesn't think secrets are a good thing and tries to convince her friend not to hide her family from her boyfriend.
The back cover copy tells us that Fallon and bad boy Sebastian may fall in love. Thank goodness I didn't read the back cover copy because isn't that always the way? Good girl falls in love with bad boy (who may have redeeming qualities or is different during the summer) and changes him? Yawn. At first, as Fallon narrates her view of Sebastian and his behaviour, it seems like this is where it's going. But she sticks to her course, and he has his own secret. Every character in this novel is hiding something, whether the librarian or Fallon or Zita. Most of the secrets cost the holder, except for Zita. Her secret costs the entire town.
Sometimes Fallon is a bit of a dipstick, but I guess she's a teen. And teens don't always think. But she has courage and a sense of standing up for the ones with no voice, to right injustice. The book is a romance, but it's more about what happens when someone distorts love for personal gain and about the qualities of love. Love doesn't keep secrets; love heals when we reveal what's hidden. It's a good mystery with decent suspense and delightfully riddled with charms and charm makers.
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