California/Michigan author Suzanne Jenkins has written so many successful novels - contemporary fiction that is a reflection of American fantasy with historical reality – that she has captured audiences with many tastes. Her various ongoing series are favorites of many readers and her stand-alone novels are garnering many awards also. Suzanne is a retired operating room nurse and her fiction reflects her training in rapid changing sequences and turns of events that are so much a part of that environs. Drama? She creates it in spades and in doing so she waxes lyrical with her prose. And another aspect of her thorough approach to her art is her careful selection of the covers of her book: the cove for PERFECT FOR HIM, though not credited, reminds us of the art of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt – perfect for this story.

Opening chapters say much about an author’s skill at raising the curtain on the proscenium arch of a story. Suzanne beings with a few words that establish the mood of the story well: ‘Dog days of late August, the perfect backdrop in which to hear a terminal diagnosis, Harley Jones thought as she walked to her car. The smell of tar and garbage mingled with the wind and the heat, like a big, stinking convection oven. It was the afternoon and the streets of Philadelphia were sweltering. That halting prelude proceeds to the story: ‘Two years after her husband, Jason makes a late night-discovery, Harley Jones finds out she’s dying, with the reality of leaving him and their four daughters behind. As obsession with what will become of her family overwhelms the little time she has left, and another woman sets her sights on Jason, Harley’s sister-in-law, Bea comes up with an idea that might solve Harley’s problems. PERFECT FOR HIM is a tale of two lovers whose lifetime romance sustains them, as an unwanted ending looms in the near future. Pathos and heartbreak intermingle with expectation and the comedy that only a close-knit family can generate. At the end, joy and hope reign, thanks to Harley’s unselfish love.’

Writing such as Suzanne offers is an oasis in the current deluge of paranormal/undead/horror stories – a book that provides not only a fine story well told, but also a sensitivity to human issues few authors can capture. This is a very fine read. Grady Harp, November 15