5* Great literary fiction, part one.

How highly can I praise this book without looking like a sycophant?

And, why are we having to wait for the next part of the story???

Elegant literary fiction which is also literate, modern, gripping, and extraordinarily entertaining, to label the subject matter a 'love triangle' would be like daubing the Taj Mahal with graffiti.
Alicia Ehrhardt takes the reader into the persons of Kary, Andrew and Bianca by turns, and uses this approach with consummate skill to construct characters whom one comes to know, dare I say this? rather better than one knows one's spouse, or significant other. She does this better than any other author I have yet read. The plot is more than character-driven; there is a sense in which the plot is the characters.

The pace is unhurried, almost meditative at times. By contrast, the tension is considerable, and the reader is kept in suspense all the way to the disappointing end. I have to call it disappointing because Ms. Ehrhardt has clearly planned the whole story across a trilogy, and this is therefore only the first part. Disappointing, because by the time one reaches the end of this first book, one is aching for resolution. Well, I was, at least.

The writing itself is beautiful, witty, and considered. I felt at times that every word had been weighed. Ms. Ehrhardt has created characters of rare power and beauty, whose natures result in relationships of living, breathing complexity. Beside the central three, other characters look quite flat - and yet, they are as developed as most good authors' central protagonists. The settings and situations are fully realised, being founded upon either the author's own experience or diligent, exhaustive research. I can't tell which. Ha!

I cannot recommend this book, this trilogy, highly enough - but not to everyone. This is a book for readers who appreciate literary fiction and a very deeply developed romance with a thoughtful debate on ethics. I believe the pace and the delayed gratification will frustrate many modern romance readers who look for fast-burning romance, titillation, and simple love stories. However, if you are a reader who will appreciate a modern 'Jane Eyre', this trilogy is for you.

5* A Book To Remember

How to characterize Purgatory: Book One of the Pride's Children trilogy?

It's centrally concerned with the interior lives of the main characters rather than with the activities going on around them, except as those activities impact their interior lives. (Things happen, it's just that how those happenings affect the people is more important than the happenings themselves.)

So it's Literary?

Specifically, the interior interplay between the characters focuses on various forms, abuses, amounts or lack of amounts, surrender to or denial of love and the power of love.

So it's Romance?

The main character copes with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, one of those "invisible" illnesses that get people vilified by mouthy and judgmental people for using handicapped parking spaces when they don't have an obvious limp.

But it isn't Disability Porn.

What it is, is exactly what I want in a book, whether it's genre (science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance) or not: It's immersion in other lives, other personalities, other realities. At 474 pages, I had plenty of time to indulge myself – except that I stayed up late and ignored my work and read and read and read.

Sometimes – rarely – I have no earthly idea why one of Ehrhardt's characters has a particular reaction or says a particular thing. Sometimes I catch on later, sometimes I don't. Either way, I read on. Because I don't have to "get" everything every time. Because I'm trespassing and eavesdropping on another psyche, and it feels natural that I wouldn't invariably understand.

These characters, you see, aren't one-dimensional, they're four-dimensional: They're full-bodied and they exist in time. Like real people you meet in real life, they have histories, and they're made up of all the people they've ever been and all the people they could possibly become. They're the people they seem to be to others, the people they seem to be to themselves, the people they wish they were, the people they're afraid they are, and the simmering stew of people-stuff that they actually are.

What happens in the book?

A movie gets made on location in New Hampshire. The life of a best-selling writer with CFS and a retreat near the location intersects with the lives of the film folk. There are various family and professional crises or near-crises. Nothing is overheated; it's a sous vide book: everything is held at the optimum temperature, with the heat of the living heart being that temperature.

I honestly don't know how to explain the grip this book had on me from the first. I couldn't stop reading it, and I wanted it never to end. I've read other books that affected me this way, but the authors always hurt the spell by tossing a plot bomb in through the window. Ehrhardt may do that before the trilogy is over, I can't see the future, but she doesn't do it in this book. The climax and ending are just as they should be: strong, natural, and satisfactory.

5* This book was a feast, and I am quietly stepping into the line for the next one.

I obtained the book through the Kindle Unlimited program, and so will not show as a Verified Purchaser.
You people, and by that I mean authors, are going to drive me crazy. I'm a simple man, a Southern redneck: I like guns, and motorcycles and exploding spaceships. I like Jar Jar Binks, because my youngest child was enamored by him when that movie came out, and it gave us another common ground. I have spent my reading career looking for books that will make me understand things the way that Huckleberry Finn did, when I read it at age 10 in 1963, and inspire me the way Starship Troopers did when I read it at age 19 in 1972. That's not too much to ask, is it?
Instead, I get stories about pixies and farm girls and mermaids, and shape-changing dragons who run a short order restaurant, and magic that comes through the strings of a violin.
We were talking about genre the other day, and I realized I had no idea what genre I was reading. It took me the longest to realize that there weren't going to be any ships landing from other planets, longer to realize nobody was going to get shot or get nekkid. ('Nekkid' is 'naked with intent'.)
In fact, it wasn't until I was reading the other reviews that I realized I have been reading a love story. Now, I'm not STUPID. I clearly followed the love story elements in the book; it's just that I'm used to them being accompanied by a transformation to animals with teeth and claws.
But while I was waiting for the reveal (which never came, because it's not THERE!) I found myself turning page after page, and DEVOURING the words, licking my lips figuratively at how delicious they were, and thinking: SHE CAN'T KEEP THIS UP! There is no way she can continue to let me walk around and see and hear and feel what the characters are experiencing; except she did.
Kary is CLEARLY a hero, by any criteria you want to apply apart from armed combat, and she is the center of the book. She lives in isolation in New Hampshire, and writes; she suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and it robbed her of her previous career as a physician, and gave her weak/treacherous husband the excuse he needed to rob her of her family. She has other grief in her life, but she does not share the pain casually.
Andrew is an Irish actor/singer/modern day knight, who is on the verge of explosive fame, who values his privacy and guards it like a dragon guards his gold. Their paths cross in a late-night talk show, and sparks fly.
Bianca is a drop-dead gorgeous actress who resents being trivialized by her spectacular beauty. She is attempting to pry credibility from the paws of the power structure, and intends to use Andrew as the crowbar.
Those are the three characters; but that's not all you get: 1. You get a private tour of the life of someone living with an incapacitating disease. 2. You get a seminar in how to be a writer, including the mechanics as well as sources of inspiration.3. You are taken behind the scenes, literally, of the making of a Hollywood movie, and introduced to ...wait for it...Penny the dessert girl. It's the interaction of the big stars with HER that spoke to me the most about the incredibly fine line ALL of them have to walk to retain their privacy, and yet be courteous persons of integrity.
Oh, I loved this book. I did not expect to, and I'm a little bit afraid that I need to check and see if my estrogen/testosterone balance has been maintained.
Okay, do I have any NEGATIVE comments? No. If I was FORCED to say something mildly critical, it would be that since I am doing all my reading on electronic devices, I really need to check the page counts reported; this is a big honken book, but I didn't know that until I had been reading for several hours,and had only finished 17% of the text. However, I compare it to the Thanksgiving feast we just celebrated at our house; some books are sandwiches, others are a bag of burgers from Checkers.

5* A Literary Achievement

How to write a review about such an accomplishment? Ms. Ehrhardt has given us a wonderful gift--a literary novel replete with fully developed characters, rich landscapes, insightful journeys into conscience, morality, and ethics. There are no gimmicks here, no plot twists to distract us from the humanity of the people she has created.

Kary had been a physician, until her struggles with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome made that profession and its demands impossible. Now she is an award-winning novelist, channeling her suffering into her art. She is living a secluded life in New Hampshire, on an estate she calls Sanctuary. Against her better judgment, she lets her agent persuade her to be interviewed on a late night talk show, where she meets the other guest, Andrew O'Connell.

Andrew O'Connell, Irish to his core, is a famous actor, renowned for his leading role in the movie Roland, and the target of gossip columnists from L.A. to New York City. Months after the talk show, he winds up in New Hampshire to complete the final scenes of his latest film, Incident at Bunker Hill. He and Kary will now meet again, and all her efforts to manage her life will be challenged as never before.

The last character in the triangle is Bianca Doyle, Hollywood star, playing opposite Andrew, determined to get the fame she feels she deserves and to get Andrew into her bed.

The writing is rich and nuanced; the characters, living and breathing. The pace is leisurely, like an afternoon tea in an English garden.The author examines what makes us human--our generosity and pettiness, our passions and rationality, our sin and integrity. It's a journey into heart and soul.