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NaomiB-brn
Posted June 6, 2011
Gothic with a twist of humor!
This book was excellent. It was able to draw me in from page one, yet kept me enthralled and interested in the story throughout the book for multiple reasons. It was weird because I would call the book a noir/romance/mystery...very unusual book..it isn't your normal type of book to be "cookie cuttered" into a genre.
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Each Angel Burns is a Masterpiece!
Each Angel Burns is Valentine's second novel & is even more sophisticated and cleverly woven than her first, An Old Mermaid's Tale, which was a story I thought would be impossible to beat. I was wrong. Each Angel Burns is a masterpiece. The story begins with a wonderful introduction to a small group of middle-aged men struggling with the disappointing realities of their lives. Two of the men in this group develop as central characters in the book: Gabe is a talented craftsman with an artist's eye and heart, and Pete, the most handsome and gifted man the old mill town ever produced is a Jesuit priest teaching at nearby Boston College. Gabe is the settled-down guy who never wandered far from home; long married with three adult daughters who've flown the nest, Gabe struggles to understand how his marriage turned into a meat locker. Valentine's ability to sketch out a marriage turned as cold as dry ice and just as caustic is astonishing. Gabe's wife is a woman seething with slowly fermented husband-hate, a hate whose seeds were planted long ago when she married Gabe, knowing full well she didn't love him. Gabe is excruciatingly unaware that the defect in his marriage is not anything he can correct. Father Pete is married too but his spouse, Holy Mother Church, is a more demanding lover than any earthly wife. Pete has been a good priest - a faithful and loving spouse - but when the only woman he ever loved, Maggie, reappears in his life he, like Gabe, is suddenly faced with his own middle-aged marital crisis. Maggie, named after The Magdalene, is married to a man of great wealth and even greater malevolence and after years of abuse Maggie has finally found a way to break free. Her husband, Sinclair, has given her the strange gift of a deconsecrated convent built on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Maggie is determined to return the Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel to its old glory and as she works to regenerate the mysterious convent it begins to regenerate her. Maggie's hunt for the famous and long-lost statue of Gabriel the Archangel that was said to miraculously guard the convent door leads her to an expert on the subject at Boston College. and back into the life of Fr. Peter Black, the man she loved but walked out on many years before. The Monastery of St. Gabriel the Archangel becomes ground zero in a Manichean battle for the hearts and souls - and lives - of all three of heaven's namesakes: Gabe, named after St. Gabriel, the patron saint of priests; Peter, the rock upon whom Christ built His church; and the Magdalene, one of the most misunderstood and maligned women in Scripture, the woman of sin with the purest of hearts. Maggie's malevolent husband is the Devil's own handiwork; he is a creature of unimaginable evil able to destroy all three as surely as he has destroyed many others. Gabriel the Archangel, however, is determined to deny the Devil his victory. EAB is sexy & sophisticated and Valentine delivers a few shockaroos that are completely unpredictable. The ending is suspenseful, original, and satisfying. A 5-Star read! Maureen Gill Author of January Moon
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