Author Mary Flinn pushes the boundaries of romance once again with her new novel Breaking Out, the story of a twice-married, once-divorced, once-widowed middle-aged woman faced with the prospect of spending the rest of her life life alone Dr. Susannah Brody has a flourishing career as a dermatologist in the small community of Magnolia Village, but that doesn’t leave her many options for meeting eligible men.
And maybe Susannah doesn’t want another man. Her first husband, Kent, cheated on her and now she has the nerve to go out with her sister. Her second husband, Stan Brody, was the great love of her life, but her unexpected death left her heartbroken. Now, on the third anniversary of her death, she still hasn’t managed to clean out Stan’s closet and likes to lounge around in her robe. Since Stan’s death, Susannah’s teenage son Myers has been the man in her life, but now he’s preparing to head off to college in the fall. And her Susannah is about to realize that she will need to find new activities or hobbies, and maybe new people in her life.
Fortunately, Susannah has her best friend, Maggie French, for company. Maggie’s daughter, Casey, is Myers’s best friend and, like him, is also going off to college, but not before she mysteriously disappears one summer day, causing Maggie and Susannah to nearly panic, and bringing a middle-aged detective named Chase into Susana’s life.
Yes, Chase is hot, but his late wife was also one of Susannah’s patients. Susannah feels some guilt for not being able to save Chase’s wife from the skin cancer that killed her, and she also realizes that Chase is still dealing with her grief over the loss of her spouse as well as her. Neither of them seem ready to give love another chance yet.
Also, there is no time for romance right now. Casey needs to be found, and Susannah suspects her son knows something he’s not telling them.
I don’t want to say more and reveal too much of the plot of Breaking Out, but I doubt the plot is the reason readers read Flinn’s novels anyway. I think they read them because Flinn writes about realistic people like Susannah Brody: middle-aged women looking for love, as well as people dealing with real-life issues: trust, self-questioning, grief over the loss of a loved one, Rising children. , labor issues, and everything that makes up human existence. Flinn is really an expert in creating realistic characters that we care about, and we want to know what happens to them as we read, and even after he finishes the book.
All that said, Flinn is also an expert on plot: her stories go round and round, but never without good reason, and we can always trust that everything will come together perfectly in the end. Flinn never disappoints or lets our attention or interest wane because she has an excellent sense of rhythm. She knows exactly when to drop a bombshell on the reader, when the drama needs some comic relief, when the reader is ready to boo a bad boy or cheer the leading man up, and when and how to achieve the happiest and most realistic. possible ending.
I think new readers of Flinn’s work will be pleasantly surprised by the way he develops the characters and weaves his plot, and longtime Flinn fans will be delighted with Breaking Out and especially the character of Susannah Brody, who after Kyle and Chelsea, in the first four Flinn novels. She may be my favorite character of hers to date.