Love Walked In
by Marisa de los Santos

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Book Reviews of Love Walked In

Book Review: "Sometimes darling, a mother has to let everything go"
Summary: 4 Stars

A self confessed romantic aficionado, she seeks succor and consolation in Cary Grant films, hoping that one day her own Cary Grant will walk through that café door. And he does, in the form of the gorgeous and elegant Martin Grace, who takes one look at her, falls in love with her, and asks her to come to London with him. Cynical about some things, totally romantic about others, and ultimately believing that "true love is tops," Cornelia is instantly enraptured by this gracious and most civilized man, even when most people would fail to be.

Her new beau, however, comes with a skeleton in his closet, in the form of his recently abandoned eleven-year-old daughter Clare. Far wise beyond her age, Clare is an absolute marvel - resourceful, imaginative, and even brave, she's the kind of girl "you usually find in books." A fan of romance fiction, and a mixture of sweetness and pluck delved from the pages of Little Women, Clare's life is thrown into turmoil when her mother Viviana starts to exhibit strange and erratic behavior.

Clare knows that something is terribly wrong when her mother starts to compulsively shop for different coloured towels; then she inexplicably pulls her daughter from school, taking her to lunch in a fancy restaurant and even giving her some red wine to drink. At first there's no explanation for her mother's strange absences or odd behaviour, and as Clare's mother gradually slips away, all the books Clare has read, have taught her nothing about what you do when your mother doesn't die, but turns into "someone you don't know, someone who doesn't take care of you anymore."

Clare is totally perplexed at the nature of her mother's mind and how it so easily skips between confusion and clarity, but the final straw comes when Viviana drops her off on the side of the road before disappearing. Forced to find a home with Martin, the young girl is set adrift, trying desperately to imagine living with her father instead of her mother, realizing that her father probably couldn't imagine it either. It all becomes too much for the poor girl, thinking, deciding, worrying – she realizes that she's through with all of that, "floating and drifting, she did not want to think at all."

Almost immediately, Cornelia falls in love with the fragile young girl and decides to take her on, but she soon discovers that Martin is not exactly the man she hoped he would be; he was chilly to his daughter in her time of need and this chilliness has ultimately disturbed her. Wracked by doubts regarding his rightness for her, even though he's a "flesh and blood man," and with the less-than-fantastic sex on her mind, Cornelia's world is rocked even more, when Tao, her distractingly handsome brother-in-law arrives in town.

Author Marisa de los Santos, progressively moves between the voices of Clare and Cornelia, exposing the deepest and most poignant of emotions of both these characters, revealing all their flaws and genuine insecurities. There's an ease of darkness in this story, a soft, and blurring quiet that smudges the lines between one person and another.

For most of Clare's life there'd been so much distance between her father and herself, an empty space across which she could send stories, because telling him mattered so little, "he was just the near-stranger he'd always been." Whilst Cornelia, when she's not distracted about the nuts and bolts of Clare's, and her own well-being, worries about her commitment to Martin, forced to deny a steadily growing attraction to Tao. For Cornelia, Clare, and Tao the world holds endless possibilities, but can their house of cards that they seem to be keeping upright through their sheer force of will, be prevented from tumbling down?

The author writes candidly and delicately, thoroughly in tune to the quiet domestic dramas of life. In her world, no one can afford to leave their troubles behind, or even live in-between a space where you think troubles can't find you; for these characters, denial and defiance is not an option; and it's where parenthood, and it's ensuring responsibilities crop up in the unlikeliest of places. It is only through her bourgeoning relationship with Clare and her surprise love affair with Martin that Cornelia comes to realize that real happiness isn't what happens when you "whistle along," and drift through life, pretending that bad things just don't exist. Mike Leonard February 06.

Romance Books

• Literature & Fiction