Life Slightly

Life Slightly 

Can you live your life without taking any direct path? What happens when you allow yourself and your emotions to be overtaken by others putting your needs aside? Gavin reveals his life’s history to someone he meets sitting on a park bench. Why does he allow her into his mind and life and why is she there? Does she know him? What’s the connection?

Gavin takes us back to high school and then university as he meets many different people and encounters some difficult situations. Forgiveness , moral values and compassion are at the heart of this novel as Gavin meets Steve in high school and feelings emerge and what might have been disappears. 

Relationships that happen yet are forbidden as both Gavin and Steve find themselves on a path that will alter their lives, questioning their fate and not ever coming to terms with the true reality of their feelings. Then Gavin meets Natalie at a party and feelings heat up but in the end darkness and loneliness wins out.

Gavin’s feelings for Steve are real yet never fully realized. Then Gavin meets Imogen as the author and Jackie reveal the next phase of his life. Gavin and Imogen fell into a pattern that seemed right yet controlling. Meeting his parents and then backing him into a proposal which sends the timeframe ahead once again . 

Imogen and Gavin marry and have a son named Tim yet he’s never really happy and his feelings for Steve provides an underlying uneasiness as they meet again when Steve’s mother dies and truths, lies and betrays come to light and feelings are expressed but Gavin remains in his life with his family and a wife who controls his means of livelihood, losing his photography studio and forced to work for her uncle and hating every minute. Even forcing a friendship with Adam her friend’s husband that reveals a side of Adam that he wanted hidden but more truths come out and then Jackie reveals something as the author takes readers back to why and when she came to Brighton. Her past is not one of a happy teen or young adult as her mother uses her psychic abilities to do readings and bring in money to support her. Their relationship was not typical mother-daughter and true feelings are expressed after she’s gone. 

Just who Jackie really is and what her reasons for talking to Gavin, Adam snd others will surprise readers as it all comes down to her mother and her past. Just how many people did she help? 

As Jackie flashes back in her mind to those she’s helped you wonder in the long run who helps her overcome her own life’s situations. 

Jackie becomes obsessed with guilt over Adam and even though she meets with Louise his death takes a guilt-ridden toll. But there’s a voice that haunts her and a shadow hanging over it as Jackie fights her inner self through the voice. 

Going to the cafe and Louise is moving ahead Gavin reenters the scene and it’s just her turn to try and help Jackie. Alone in the world, he tries to provide some comfort and more as we revisit him and his wife finally making a drastic change where will that take him?

Truths, lies, and deceptions come full-blown at a dinner party at Louise’s house as the past comes even more into the present and Imogen learns Gavin quit his job and what happens next changes his family’s dynamics and more.

Confrontations and past mistakes and Gavin once again turns to Steve where will everyone wind up? 

Life’s journey changed when the lockdown and virus came front and center and Gavin became the primary parent for Tim Imogen moved into Louise’s house and remorse, despair, and confusion as he and Steve considered their lives would they finally be together? 

An ending that will surprise you as Jackie faces some harsh realities and Gavin comes full circle with his own. Some endings are beginnings but where will Jackie/ Shirley wind up

and will she embrace life and not live a life slightly? Is there more to come? The author created a complex plot with characters that are diverse yet alike each one searching for their true identities and each one trying to find their true meaning in life. 

Fran Lewis just reviews