The wonderful folks at William Morrow make it easy and fun for a reader to select advanced reader’s editions titles. THE PRECIOUS ONE is the latest from Marisa de los Santos. As I read and loved her three other novels I jumped at the change to read her latest.
This was a complete departure from what I was expecting. In fact it was a little hard for me to read and return to each day. But about halfway through I found my pace and started to be more pulled in to this novel and its characters.
Two sisters with the same father but kept from each other. A father who was difficult to deal with and finally deserting his family to make another. When their dad suffers a heart attack he contacts his grown children from his first marriage, Eustacia (Taisy) and Marcus. Taisy’s curiosity and her need for her father’s approval and love sends her to see why her dad (Wilson) after all these years reaches out to her.
Taisy finds that she likes her step sister (Willow) and her step mom (Caro). Taisy it turns out is the glue this family needs. And she also understands and likes her 16 year old sister even though Willow was not welcoming.
Old relationships are resurrected and new relationships are formed. While this family has been broken any number of times, they find their way to a new normal as the sister’s find they love and need each other.
This story was hard for me to identify with and maybe that is what first kept me at a distance. But once again Santos’s writing and solid story telling won me over. Still not my favorite read from Santos but I look forward to her next novel.
To find out more about Marisa de los Santos visit her facebook page. Be sure to pick up her other novels: Love Walked In, Belong to Me, and Falling Together. Santos and her author husband, David Teague, write middle-grade fiction if you need some good reading for the kids this summer.
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I enjoyed your review. I loved this novel, but agree that is was slow starting. Once I got about half way into it, I couldn’t put it down.
Thx for stopping by. Gosh I atruggled with finding something to pull me in to these characters and their story. But once it did turn a corner I agree I could not wait to return to resd a chapter.