I absolutely loved How to Walk Away so I was very excited to see that Katherine Center has a new book. Fans of Center will not be disappointed.
Cassie is a firefighter and is faced with having to relocate from Texas to Massachusetts to help her mother with her medical problems. She quickly discovers that her new department is not nearly as progressive and female-friendly as Austin’s, which even had a female chief. Cassie finds that she has to prove herself again and again to be accepted as “one of the guys.”
Cassie lives a very predictable and regimented life. She likes it like that. She needs to to be in control of her life at all times after two unpredictable and tragic events traumatized her on her 16th birthday
Because of these traumatic experiences, Cassie has successfully insulated herself from getting close to others, but now she finds herself craving companionship and love. You see, Cassie has a big crush on the rookie firefighter at her new department but she knows that if anything were to happen between them, she would lose her job and career. But sometimes, as hard as one may try, you can’t stop love.
Center has a talent for creating characters with such depth, that you truly feel like you know them. Cassie is believable, relatable, genuine, and admirable. At the same time, she faces major psychological struggles that you or I might have encountered as well — emotionally blocked and isolated, estranged mother, doesn’t believe in love, etc.
Things You Save in a Fire is about Cassie’s journey to psychological maturity and confronting the issues holding her back from love and enjoying life. Her biggest obstacle and lesson she needs to learn is forgiveness of others and of herself. I was rooting for Cassie and experienced her transformation.
We feel so many different emotions along with Cassie, such as joy, anger, trust, surprise, etc. I was particularly moved when she experiences empathy and compassion for her mother.
“For the first time, I understood. In all the times I’d remembered that story, I’d experienced every single part of it from my own perspective, standing in my own sixteen-year-old shoes. Now, for the first time, I saw it unfold from a new angle. Hers. And it changed the story.”
This book has all the elements — drama, love, suspense, heroism, a little humor, and secrets! It is well written with three-dimensional characters. We get to know the inner struggles of these characters and the motivations for their behavior.
The first line of the novel grabbed me and it never let me go.
“The night I became the youngest person—and the only female ever—to win the Austin Fire Department’s Valor Award, I got propositioned by my partner.”
I really enjoy Katherine Center’s writing (see examples below) and am looking forward to reading her earlier books while I wait for her next one.
“...two ladies pulled out dress after dress, holding them up in front of me, then tossing them in rejection piles on the bed. Too purple, they’d decide. Or: Too bright. Too dark. Too flashy. Too plain. Too stiff. Too floppy. Too many pleats. Too teenagery. Too old-lady. Too much cleavage. Not enough cleavage. And on and on.”
“Down in Texas, everybody had been robust and tan. Here, they looked like ashtrays.”
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment