Little Lovely Things by Maureen Joyce Connoly

     

Lovely Little Things is the debut novel by author Maureen Joyce Connolly. What a debut this is. As a mother, the topic of this book hit really close to home. It is about a mother, whose children are taken from her. That made it a little hard to read at times, but I powered though that, and thoroughly enjoyed this book.

  We meet Claire and Glen. They are loving parents to their two beautiful daughters, Andrea and Lily. On the day of the of the kidnapping, Claire is trying to soldier through an allergic reaction to a vaccination she was required to take. That day, it was her responsibility to drop the girls off while she and Glen were at work. She was really struggling with not feeling well, and knew she needed to pull over. She pulled into a gas station, and ran into the bathroom, leaving the car running with her two girls inside. After all, it was hot, and she wanted them to have air conditioning. Unfortunately, she passes out, and the unthinkable happens. Her car, with her children inside are taken.

    Next we are introduced to two more people. Eamon and Moira. In my head, I pictured them to look like Xander and Zoe from The Bold and the Beautiful. I was really excited to meet them, initially because my Son is also named Eamon. But, once I learned more, I was glad my son actually goes by his middle name. We don’t see too much more of Eamon, but Moira hangs around for a much longer period of time. 

  Jay white. I was really confused when we met him. He seemed to come out of nowhere. And the fact that this story is told in many different characters points of view, I didn’t understand who he was. We do learn though by the end of his first chapter, and he becomes a very important part of the story. He is an indian man, and he has this intuition that proves very helpful. And he’s just a great guy. He has a troubled past, but he was probably my favorite character, and my favorite chapters to read.

    I won’t talk about the other people we meet because I don’t want to ruin the story. I will continue to talk about why I loved this book, and the little bits that I didn’t like. Overall, I really did enjoy this book. I understand why it was told in so many points of view, but it was really difficult to really get attached to any character because I felt like I didn’t get to know any of them enough. I did appreciate the flaws and struggles of all of the characters though. My favorite character was Jay. I just felt like he had the most personality, and he was just a sweetheart who got dealt a bad hand in life, but was doing his best to play the cards he had. My second favorite character was actually Moira. She managed to make me feel for her, and hate her. And that is something that, in my opinion, makes a good character. I do truly believe she thought she was doing good by taking the girls, since Eamon is a good liar. But, then I hated her because once Eamon was out of the picture, she could have done the right thing, and dropped the girls off somewhere they would be found. So I think initially she had good intentions, but the bad in her is what lead the way.

  There wasn’t enough of Glen to really have an opinion, but Claire, there is. I like her. She was a mother who was struggling and tried to be a good mom, even though she probably almost died. We spent a lot of time with her, feeling her emotions, and those were the hardest chapters for me to read.

  I was slightly disappointed at the ending. I had conflicting emotions. Both happy, and annoyed. I don’t want to give too much away, but I feel like I want to know what ended up happened to all of our characters. Since we spent so much time jumping around in the different heads of the characters, I wanted more of their thoughts in the aftermath. But I did enjoy this book, and will be telling everyone I know, to read this book.

I was given this book in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion of this book.