Exceeding Expectations
By: Lisa April Smith
Publisher: 2old2wait2young2giveup
Published: Nov. 29, 2011
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Author
Rating:
It’s 1961 and Palm Beach socialite, irresistible rascal and devoted father Jack Morgan encounters genuine danger while staging his suicide to shield his beloved daughters from disgrace. Next, meet his daughter Charlotte (Charlie), an over-indulged 23 year-old struggling to cope with the traumatizing loss of her beloved father, her sister’s resulting mental breakdown and the discovery that she’s suddenly penniless. Fortunately Raul, an admiring young attorney, appears to offer assistance. As terrified as she is about daily survival, Charlie soon realizes that she has to learn what drove her father to kill himself. With Raul’s much needed ego-bolstering, the drive of necessity and unforeseen determination, Charlie finds a practical use for her annoyingly lean 5’ 11” frame. In time, this career finances her hard-wrought independence, her sister’s costly treatment and an emotional eye-opening journey to Paris.
Jumping back in time to romantic pre-WWII Paris readers meet young Alan Fitzpatrick – aka Jack Morgan – lack-luster artist, expert lover, irresistible rascal, and the bewitching girl who will become the mother of his children. Not even Charlie’s relentless detective work will uncover all Jack’s secrets, but in a fireworks of surprise endings, she discovers all that she needs to know and more: disturbing truths about her father, hew own unique talent, crimes great and small and a diabolical villain.
Charlie grew up in a pampered life as a socialite. However, everything changed when she receives the news that her father committed suicide. Her father had nothing to leave her and her sister and Charlie is forced to come up with a solution to not only support herself but to pay the clinic bills where her sister is currently being treated for her breakdown. After meeting a nice lawyer, Raul, Charlie decides to find the truth about her father and in doing so unearths a lot more than she bargained for.
In the beginning Charlie is this spoiled young lady who has had everything handed to her on a silver platter but with everything that she goes through in the story, she grows up and leaves her socialite life behind. She no longer cares that she’s fallen in love with a man who isn’t rich due to his family fortune but instead a Cuban lawyer making an honest living through his labors of work.
The story flip flops between Charlie getting her bearings and everything that her father endured leading up to his suicide. It talks about how he met her mother and the genocide that they faced with Hitler, him taking Charlie and her sister to America to escape the impending war and how he rebuilt himself when he got to America.
“Don’t say anything.” I whispered. “Don’t even breath. That’s a grizzly bear. Oh my God, he’s getting closer.” Instead of looking frightened, the man holding me laughed. “Why are you laughing? Are you insane?”
“A grizzly bear? You hear a grizzly bear? You think you don’t need me? That’s the snowplow, you ninny.”
I’ve never heard of this book or the author but the cover caught my eye, I love it! This sounds different to a lot of the books available right now too!