“What He’s Been Missing” by Grace Octavia
c.2012, Dafina Books $15.00 / $16.95 Canada 272 pages
There’s one thing you want this coming year, and it can’t be found in a store. This thing you want can’t be boxed, bottled or canned. Designers can’t fashion it and factories can’t create it. What you want can’t be fitted, but it’ll be exactly the right size when you find it.
What you want is love this year, and so does Rachel Winslow. She’s a professional when it comes to Happily Ever After but in the new novel, “What He’s Been Missing” by Grace Octavia, she’s not sure where to find it.
A sofa was not the place Rachel thought she’d be spending New Year’s Eve.
Nope, she figured she’d be dancing close and drinking cheap champagne with the love of her life, except there was no such love and there was nobody on the horizon. That night, it was just Rachel, an old movie and a pizza delivery.
She was Atlanta’s hottest wedding planner, which didn’t help her mood. She saw love every day and that was okay; she loved love. She just wished it could be hers in the New Year. Everybody except Rachel, it seemed, was paired up with somebody. Even her best friend, Ian, had a girlfriend.
Sometimes, if she was honest with herself, she’d admit that Ian was really the guy for her. Hanging with him was easy, they had the same interests, they enjoyed the same restaurants, and they sometimes completed each others’ sentences.
But then Ian asked his girl, Scarlet, to marry him, and Scarlet asked Rachel to plan the wedding, which Rachel didn’t want to do. How could she help Ian marry someone else when he should be marrying her?
She needed to tell Ian about her feelings, before mistakes were made. But the mistake was Rachel’s: On the eve of his New Orleans wedding, she told Ian that she loved him. He got mad and their friendship was badly broken.
But did it matter? Ian had Scarlet and it didn’t take long for Rachel to connect with someone from her past. Finally, she found love.
She found her man.
But did she truly find her future?
So your Bucket List has “Get Married” on it this year? Then read “What He’s Been Missing,” and be careful what you wish for.
With wit, smarts and subtly clever humor, the author brings her readers a warm tale of love, mistakes and fixing them both, which should make it a story familiar with legions of women around the world.
Octavia’s Rachel is a savvy sistah who’s long on strong but wrong in her choice of men until Mr. Right steps right in her path, even though she doesn’t initially notice. Because of all that, and despite a German-Shepherd-size “oops” that eagle-eyed dog lovers will quickly spot, this was a very enjoyable book and definitely worth your time.
In this story, Rachel didn’t settle and neither should you, so don’t accept any other book than this one. For novel lovers and romance-a-holics, “What He’s Been Missing” can’t be missed.
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The Bookworm is Terri Schlichenmeyer. Terri has been reading since she was 3 years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 12,000 books. Her self-syndicated book reviews appear in more than 260 newspapers.
