Author: Addison Moore
Publication Date: August 13, 2013
Contemporary Romance
When old love and new love collide an impossibility is born.
When Lee Townsend’s husband leaves on a community outreach to China, the last thing she expects is for him to never come back—for him to have tragically met his demise.
Lee goes on to marry his adversary and settles into life and business with him, merging her vineyard with his and creating a worldwide conglomerate.
Five years later a twist of fate brings the past back to her and forces Lee to make a decision that will change the landscape of her life forever.
Secrets emerge, forcing relationships to be examined—magnifying the surprising true underpinnings of her marriage to both Mitch and Max.
Lee’s heart is unwilling to surrender her love for either Mitch or Max. She must choose to carry forward with the past or present.
Lee has a choice to make. Mitch can’t figure out how to win. Max never loses. Worlds collide in THE SOLITUDE OF PASSION
*a copy was provided by InkSlinger PR for review purposes*
I really have no idea how to even begin this review or how to rate it! My emotions were all over the place while reading about Lee, Mitch, and Max. The story shifts between the view points of each of these characters so you know what's happening to them and how they are each feeling about the situation they are in. Lee is first married to Mitch, her high school sweetheart, but she still harbors feelings for Max from high school. It's very clear from the beginning that both Mitch and Max are in love with Lee and have been since they were kids and the two were best friends, but something happened during high school to tear them apart. Max and Lee have no idea why Mitch suddenly stopped being friends with Max, keeping both himself and Lee away from Max. Mitch would never talk to Lee about it and he certainly wouldn't tell Max. And then one fateful trip to China tears Mitch and Lee apart, leaving a pregnant Lee and everyone else to believe that Mitch is dead. Max comes to her rescue, keeping Mitch's vineyard afloat and helping Lee through one of her greatest heartbreaks and two years after Mitch's death Max and Lee marry. However, Mitch isn't dead. In fact, he's been held hostage for five years and in a lucky chance he's free to go home, hoping to be with his wife and child once again. He isn't expecting her to have fallen in love with and married his worst enemy.
My feelings for these three characters are all over the place. One minute I liked them, even adored them--the next minute I wanting to pull my hair out for their foolish behavior. After Mitch's return, Lee can't keep her hands off him. But she can't keep her hands off of Max either. And Mitch and Max have no regards for the others feelings so they flaunt their indiscretions in each others faces while Lee is just bouncing back and forth between the two incredibly confused because she feels like she has two husbands. The biggest problem I had with Lee isn't the fact that she felt that way, but the fact that she so willingly slept with two different men, not caring about hurting them and often telling them both that she chooses them and that she'll tell the other soon but she never actually chooses. The biggest part of this book is her going back and forth between the two in that manner and it really pissed me off. However, I would get equally pissed at Mitch and Max. I could understand more of Max's behavior than Mitch's because Max was in fact Lee's husband at the present time and Mitch continuously called Lee his wife even though they all thought he was dead for five years. He couldn't understand that Lee was married to Max. For some reason it just wouldn't click in his head how she couldn't leave Max as soon as he returned. He behaved childishly, irresponsibly and selfishly in my opinion. It wasn't until the very end of the book that something terrible happens and he redeems himself.
I was angry throughout 75% of this book, but then the ending completely unraveled me and broke my heart for everyone. I knew something bad was going to end up happening because you get that feeling throughout the entire book: even though something bad did happen at the beginning, it just felt like something worse was going to happen at the end, even though you hoped it didn't. The ending is beautiful, yet heartbreaking, but even so I understood that something like that was going to have to happen in order for them all to have some sort of peace even though it was completely horrible.
Like I said, I'm kind of on the fence with this one. Some parts of the story I would consider a 3 yet other parts I would definitely place as a 4. I suppose I will have to do something I've never done before: rate a book in between.
I rate this book:
.5
I always struggle with how to rate books that have me jumping between swooning and wanting to punch the characters because I mean, on either end of the spectrum it's effective at drawing emotion out of you, right? So I totally get how this one made you feel!
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