Second Glance

Since my parents are coming into town tomorrow for my son's first b-day and will be here until March 5th I am going to write my comments early.
I liked the second half of the book better than the first. I thought that she did a pretty good job with suspense. Even though she gave a lot of stuff away pretty early you still wanted to keep reading to read it for sure.
I was annoyed with the tragedy of Ross. I was also annoyed that it took falling in love again to knock him out of his selfish attitude. It was more like he replaced his lost love - he didn't really get over anything he just took up his love for the new girl where he left off with the old one. He didn't learn to forgive himself or even really to live for himself. He did learn that there were more people on earth to live for and that he wanted to live for them. Which is a start but not a fix to his emotional baggage. And while I love a good happy ending I was annoyed that everybody found their true love at the end of the book. It was just a little too perfect and fateful.
I cringed everytime that Lia tried to commit suicide while she was pregnant. Her relationship with her husband was interesting because she seemed to truly love him even though he didn't know her or try to know her. The author did a good job of making her husband a well-balanced character- he wasn't all bad or all good. He was seriously misguided and blind but he cared for Lia in the only way he knew. He had good intentions but he was so misguided and prejudiced that he could only hurt the situation.
I thought the prejudice against the gypsies was an interesting and terrifying bit of history. The US that we live in today is so different. Prejudice does still exist of course but it is so different. It is amazing to me that people with that kind of mindset could have had so much power and been so mainstream.
Overall I thought it was an o.k. book. It didn't wow me but it wasn't too disappointing either.