TITLE: A Hero to Come Home To (Tuesday Night Margarita Club #1)
AUTHOR: Marilyn Pappano
GENRE: Contemporary Romance
PUBLISHED: June 25, 2013
RATING: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon, Kobo Books, Barnes&Noble
MOBILISM LINK: A Hero to Come Home To
Description: First he fought for his country. Now he'll fight for her.
Two years after losing her husband in Afghanistan, Carly Lowry has rebuilt her life in Tallgrass, Oklahoma. She has a job she loves teaching third grade and the best friends in the world: fellow military wives who understand what it means to love a man in uniform. She's comfortable and content...until she meets a ruggedly handsome stranger who rekindles desires Carly isn't quite sure she's ready to feel.
Staff Sergeant Dane Clark wanted to have a loving family, a twenty-year Army stint, and then a low-key civilian career. But the paratrooper's plans were derailed by a mission gone wrong. Struggling to adjust to his new life, he finds comfort in the wide open spaces of Tallgrass--and in the unexpected attention of sweet, lovely Carly. She is the one person who makes him believe life is worth living. But when Carly discovers he's been hiding the real reason he's come to Tallgrass, will Dane be able to convince her he is the hero she needs?
Review: I started this book knowing it was a tear-jerker of a series; one that pulls your heart strings letting you know they can still break. After reading this book all I can say is WOW! Knowing that this story line is not just an imagination but something many people face every day just creates more tears.
Readers begin with Carly remembering how many months, weeks and days since the passing of her husband.
Thirteen months, two weeks, and three days.
Having never experienced a loss similar to this I cannot come close to understanding the heartache. To know that someone you expected to go old and gray with but only received a few short years to enjoy them. Honestly this book will make readers think and hopefully be more appreciative of the loved ones in their life.
Carly honestly does not know how to move on. She is lost without something to help her stay afloat in her drowning sorrow. After have talked to counselors, chaplains, and family she slowing finds the courage to ask a fellow teacher who has lived thru the same torment.
Readers are quickly forwarded to one year later. The transaction was smooth without leaving readers feeling lost. I personally would have enjoyed to see how Carly grew and learned to take ‘One Day at a Time’.
Carly has joined the Tuesday Night Margarita Club aka The Fort Murphy Widows’ Club. With the love and support from fellow widows she has started to embrace life again. Carly has a fear of heights. I can understand about fear, but honestly do not believe I would be climbing up 80 feet to see a cave if I were scared of heights. As Carly thought right before the climb she only has one fear to face today...
There was only one fear Carly needed to face today: her fear of heights.
Readers are first introduced to Dane after Carly makes her way into the cave. Dane either went looking for a place to hide for a few hours or just to see if it was possible for him to climb the 80 feet is left to the reader’s imagination. Dane was not friendly to everyone but he was not rude. I felt like he portrayed a loner who was lost trying to find his way.
When Dane gets back to his apartment he is feeling sorry for himself. I can understand he is at a stumbling block in his life. No one expects to come home from a war without everything they had going in.
How had he filled his Saturday afternoons before? Running for his life sometimes. Taking other people’s lives sometimes. Jumping out of helicopters, patrolling barren desert, interfacing with locals. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, it had been riding his motorcycle through the Italian Alps, taking the train to Venice with his buddies, sightseeing and drinking too much. Hanging out, using too many women badly trying to get over his failed marriage.
Carly teaches third grade and each week she takes the kids to visit the Warrior Transition Unit. A very noble visit, either to help other soldiers or the kids it is something that brightens everyone’s day. While visiting the soldiers Carly runs into Dane again.
“We come over every Tuesday afternoon to visit. At any given time, half of my class has one parent deployed—a few mothers, mostly fathers. This gives them something to look forward to, a little time with someone like their daddies, and the soldiers enjoy it, too.”
We as humans all have different hang up’s about our body. Still I am trying to understand why Dane was so scared about informing Carly why he was in the physical therapy area. Yes, his injury was horrible but that does not change the fact that it still happened. Ignoring the problem never makes the problem go away. It just prolongs admitting you have a problem and slows the recovery time.
It seems Dane took Carly saying the word perfect to heart. I wondered if he thought she was a vain self-centered person where everything had to be perfect. Dane used this as an excuse to not tell Carly why he was at the Warrior Transaction Unit. Still if he thought this about her he probably would not be interested in forming a relationship.
Perfect. What was the thing most of the women he knew had with perfection and getting it right on the first try? Life wasn’t perfect. It was incredibly messy and out of everyone’s control and sometimes even when you did something a second time, the results still sucked.
This book will touch anyone’s heart. Two people finding love again, one who lost a spouse to the War on Terrorism the other to infidelity. Dane and Carly could be the typically couple looking for that special someone. On the outside to other they might be typically, but on the inside they are anything but typically.
Dane tries to accept the damage to his body, while Carly tries to accept life without her first husband. These two have a little bit of a roller coaster relationship. They each have been through so much but keep living, never giving up.
Then this wonderful couple gets their Happily-Ever-After.
“There aren’t enough adaptive skills in the world to get me through that. I love you, Carly. I want to marry you. I want to have little Jeff Juniors and Dane Juniors and Carly Juniors to chase after with you.”
This is a wonderful book that will touch the heart of many. We all know someone who has served, be sent to fight in a war. Someone who is willing to give their life to protect everything we live and stand for. Someone who believes that we as Americans have the right to worship however we want, marry who we want, or just read a banned book. Pappano has taken a taboo subject and created something wonderful.