Teaser Tuesdays: A Time to Tell, by Maria Savva

I’m reading Maria Savva’s A Time to Tell, at the last minute for a GoodReads reading group. This is part of my goal to read more unknown, mid-list, and indie authors this year.

Maria sent me a copy of book as a PDF (even though it isn’t officially available as an e-book). She was also nice enough to read my book Love through the Eyes of an Idiot, giving it a whopping 5-out-of-5 stars. (Full disclosure for the comments that appear below.)

From the official product description: A Time to Tell is the story of Cara, her attempted suicide, how she became a smitten, eighteen-year-old, unmarried mother, her marriage, her husband’s death, her role as a grandmother, and her final, passionate reunion with the man she has always loved. It is also the parallel tale of Cara’s prodigal son Benjamin and his daughter Penelope, whose unhappy relationship with her father has led her into marriage with a man whose own dysfunctional family have turned him into a person who at first seems strangely attractive, but turns out to have a dark and terrifying side.

I’m almost a third of the way through the book, and it’s easy reading, but the prose so far rambles on. Many books, I find, I need to read a third of the way through before the story really gets interesting. They can be frustrating to start, but in the end, I still manage to rate them highly. I don’t know yet whether A Time to Tell is one of those stories. Although it unfortunately did not grab me from the first paragraph, it holds the promise of some profundity in its future.

So far, most of the conflicts are what I (as an author and student of human psychology) would expect: a girl from a dysfunctional family meets a boy from a severely dysfunctional family, and she falls in love with him, despite the fact that there’s nothing zero nada zilch nil in the relationship, except that he’ll obviously end up treating her in the same unconscionable manner that he has always seen his own loved ones treat each other. Unfortunately, a realistic pattern. And though I would have liked it if Maria had given me some new insight into the girl’s thoughts and feelings, I’m not disappointed that she didn’t. Frankly, I’m just glad to get through this disgusting, I’ve-been-around-too-long-to-be-shocked-even-by-this-sh** part of the story, as quickly as I can. Or to rip off Tony Campolo: It’s Friday. But Sunday’s comin’. (I hope.)

There’s also a sub-plot about one of the heroine’s uncle’s, who is suffering from depression. This interests me, because—as you may know—I have suffered with depression and have become a student of it. The story is set up to have him looking after his mother-in-law, and ironically, that’s probably one of the best things that could happen to him to lift him out of his depression.

Here’s today’s teaser, from p. 105 (randomly selected by a random-number generator):

Cara now felt an overwhelming urge to tell her how cruel she had been and how she had ruined Beattie’s life, killing the young girl with her spite, and how it had made Cara feel when she had betrayed her confidence and never shouldered any of the blame. ‘You haven’t said you’re sorry,’ she said, speaking her thoughts as they raced through her mind.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just follow the directions at the “Teaser Tuesdays” post.

-TimK

P.S. Right now, the From the Ashes of Courage e-novel is on-sale for under a dollar. But in about a week, I’m going to be raising the price! Ditto with the Love through the Eyes of an Idiot download, which is, for now, still free. So if you’ll want an e-book copy of either of these books, now is the best time to get it.