"HOW TO WALK AWAY"......AFFLICTION, AFFECTION & A CRANKY HUNK.....

How To Walk Away by Katherine Center (2018)   This book normally would have stayed way, way under our radar......along with 1000's of other chick-lit novels.......

                Except that Graeme Simison, author of two of our huge favorites "The Rosie Project" and "The Rosie Effect", (see our posts on these) wrote a glowing blurb for it.......

                And if you've stopped in to the BQ before, you know we HATE, HATE, HATE blurbs......they're about as reliable as anything out of Trump's mouth that starts or ends with...."..believe me"  or....."many people are saying...."

                 But surprise, surprise. Our guy Simison is right on the money about this one. "How To Walk Away", we don't mind admitting, played us like a piano.......

                 All it took was author Center's gift for laugh-out-loud wit to have us at hello. And it's a lucky thing she's so gifted at such dry humor, because if we described the plot, you'd think we'd gone out of our minds for liking such a blatant tear-squeezer so much......

                 So here goes.......Margaret, our typically beautiful, brilliant millennial woman ends up badly burned and paralyzed from the knees down when her golden-boy, thoughtless fiance takes her for a doomed flight on a little plane he was still learning to fly.   After crashing the plane, Mr. Feckless Fiance walks away without a scratch........while our poor gal sees her future destroyed before her eyes.

                 To the rescue, enter Ian, the taciturn, unfriendly physical therapist assigned to conduct and oversee Margaret's painful rehab. (Oh, did we forget to mention he's a hunky Scottish guy, kind of a young gruff Sean Connery?)

                  You guessed correctly...….a rocky, bumpy road to romance follows, strewn with dialogue both funny and heartbreaking.  The book flirts dangerously near soap opera with its family secret subplot, but Center maintains this high wire act, balancing the yocks and the tears with aplomb to the very end.  (Her swift, clean prose works wonders here......makes the book move like lightning.)

                  Rare for us to ever say this...…..but you can believe the blurbs on the back cover for a change...…(but we advise never to let your guard down in that regard)  Corny and obvious.....but that didn't stop us from lovin' it......and pumping out 4 stars (****).