Maybe This Time: Maybe This Time

I picked this book up at a discount bookstore as much because I like to read light-hearted fare for a change every once in a while, as for the fact that I needed something else to charge a minimum amount on my credit card. I mistakenly started reading it last evening. Big mistake. I got so engrossed in the story I could not put it down! I almost skipped dinner, and only finished it at 2 in the morning (and I would have to be up by 6!). The book tells the story of a group of friends who went to high school together, and the secrets revolving around a terrible accident that changed the course of their lives. Emily is a single successful woman who is almost hopeless she will get married and have children. Deciding not to wait anymore for Mr. Right, she buys her own house in the suburbs. Upon hearing a long-lost high school friend on the radio, she feels the need to contact her high school sweetheart, who had unexplicably left her twice in the past. Their deejay friend starts a popular series on his radio show about a group of high school kids who are more than based on Emily and her friends. Her former boyfriend, Jeff, and Emily try to reach out to their radio friend, who had all of a sudden disappeared before graduation, following a car accident that involved Emily, Jeff, and another friend who had been at the wheel, and had ever since been confined to a wheelchair. United again, each person has secrets that unravel during the course of the novel. Its cheesy cover should not lead you away -- there is no explicit love scenes, and this character-driven, well written plot will keep you asking for more.

Kathleen Gilles Seidel is the most underrated contemporary novelist I know of, partly, perhaps, because she writes "romances", but even this does not explain it. Her characters are interesting and diverse and her feel for dialoge is outstanding. People change and grow, but only in believable ways. My husband likes them even!

This book is an excellent book that has great character development, an entertaining plot, romance (without tons of graphic sex) and is a book I will read over and over again.