Gravity Multicultural Romance
The Wild Rose Press, Inc
July 15, 2020
240
After being shunned by her Middle Eastern family, medical assistant Leila Solomon struggles to build a life for herself and her child. Landscape photographer Aiden Stone built a career seeing what others miss, and the second he meets Leila, he is drawn to her unassuming beauty and fragile strength.
Leila cannot defy the gravitational forces pulling her toward Aiden and to the family who cast her out. To build a future with Aiden, she must face the past but is she strong enough to resist being pulled back into the family fold?
Reviewed by Marie Loring
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Leila Solomon has troubles. But she also has a beautiful daughter and a steadfast friend. Her two supporters keep her grounded in her new life, allowing her to grow as an individual, and not as an extension of those who brought her into this world.
Aiden Stone is a local photographer, who also has a child and a best friend. He, too, has controversial baggage dogging him and threatening to hold him back. Despite those difficulties, he’s made quite the success of himself.
These two come together in a natural way, allowing their relationship to grow gently and easily into a sweet romance. The children are well written and you can feel the genuine love each parent has for their offspring.
The author also does a very nice job with her settings. The descriptions, especially of the ocean, make the reader feel we are one with the scene.Unfortunately, the author hasn’t trusted her characters enough to let them tell the story. If she had given them more of a voice instead of depending on an abundance of prose, it would have rendered the tale more personal, more engaging, and I would have given it a higher rating.
I found the book difficult to connect with throughout the first chapter. Too many metaphors, many of them mixed, made understanding difficult, the writing wordy and choppy. Simpler would have had more success drawing me in. Also, the jeopardy in which Leila finds herself, mid-book, seems more incidental than germane to the story. It could have been skipped altogether, or expanded upon to make for some interesting suspense.
All in all, I would say the book has a lot to say. Ms.Sedrak has an interesting voice, and will certainly be an author to watch with her subsequent writing endeavors.