RELEASE DAY REVIEW: 'The California Dashwoods' by Lisa Henry
Title: The California Dashwoods
Author: Lisa Henry
Published: May 1, 2018
Publisher: Self-Published
Cover Artist: Natasha Snow/Natasha Snow Designs
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Length: 211 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Angst; Family Drama; HFN; CW: Grief
About The California Dashwoods
Make a new future. Choose your true family. Know your own heart.
When Elliott Dashwood’s father dies, leaving his family virtually penniless, it’s up to Elliott to do what he’s always done: be the responsible one. Now isn’t the right time for any added complications. So what the hell is he doing hooking up with Ned Ferrars? It’s just a fling, right?
Elliott tries to put it behind him when the family makes a fresh start in California, and if he secretly hopes to hear from Ned again, nobody else needs to know. While his mom is slowly coming to terms with her grief, teenage Greta is more vulnerable than she’s letting on, and Marianne—romantic, reckless Marianne—seems determined to throw herself headfirst into a risky love affair. And when Elliott discovers the secret Ned’s been keeping, he realizes that Marianne isn’t the only one pinning her hopes on a fantasy.
All the Dashwoods can tell you that feelings are messy and heartbreak hurts. But Elliott has to figure out if he can stop being the sensible one for once, and if he’s willing to risk his heart on his own romance.
A modern retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
Read Chapter ONE HERE!
5 HEART READ
REVIEW:
The first chapter of Lisa Henry's The California Dashwoods, convinced me her novel would merit five hearts. In a few fascinating phrases she presents a houseful of quirky characters, coexisting in a precarious situation.
"In the awkward silence that descended over the dining room, Great Uncle Montgomery muttered over non-existent mold spores, and Greta turned her steak knife over and over in her palm in a thoughtful manner that made Aunt Cynthia shuffle her chair a few inches further away. Happy families." Wow!
To set the plot, readers learn Henry Dashwood left his first wife and son, to marry the nanny, Abby. Their passionate marriage lasted the twenty years until his death. Though Henry became a successful painter who raised three children, Elliot, Marianne and Greta, the uber-wealthy Dashwood family was not amused he had absconded with “the help.” While they granted his use of a Massachusetts mansion and a small allowance, Abby and the children’s financial rights were blocked.
The California Dashwoods starts after Henry Dashwood's demise, when he asked his two sons to look after the family, i.e., John, from his first marriage, (who he essentially abandoned) as well as Elliot, Henry and Abby’s overly responsible eldest. Elliot knows no provisions have been made for him or his sisters, and has always acted as his parent’s parent, reminding Henry to pay bills, and giving up college to nurse his father through cancer for three years.
Told as Elliot's story, The California Dashwoods is less a romance than a breathtaking examination of how desire, attraction, and longing distort pragmatic thought, until lovers can’t distinguish the truth of their relationships.
In exchange, Henry was a terrifically loving and wise father, if somewhat selfish and childish. In fact, the author weaves incredible acceptance between family members, an unconditional support that left outsider’s helping hands suspect. Or was it that Henry and Abby created walls to insulate their embattled relationship, walls their children must now learn to drop?
In the shock of a funeral and stillness of early mourning, Elliot has a quick, yet emotionally empathetic hookup with Ned, the wealthy brother of John's wife. It's discovery hastens his family's ejection from the only home they’ve ever known.
Lisa Henry can shoot dread through readers with the sunniest of statements. For example, when the Dashwoods insist Abby’s family leave the mansion, Elliot argues for time, that they can't survive without a plan. "'Oh Honey...Of course, we can. All we need is each other,'" Abby replies. And when he disagrees, she cuts him short. "'You worry too much.'"
Abby’s cousin, still living in their California lakeside hometown, comes through, offering a cramped apartment over his store, in exchange for their time manning the shop. While Elliot finds work as a lowly waiter and attempts to hold the family together financially and emotionally, he envies Marianne’s quick emergence into her own passionate love affair. And he we wishes he connected with his emotions as well as Greta, who verbalizes the family’s fury.
Meanwhile, Abby stays pollyannishly optimistic that she'll support her daughters making fifteen dollar bracelets. Does Abby even accept her husband is dead?
Told as Elliot's story, The California Dashwoods is less a romance than a breathtaking examination of how desire, attraction, and longing distort pragmatic thought, until lovers can’t distinguish the truth of their relationships. Despite the bleakness of his existence, Elliot is surprised by the persistence of rescue daydreams starring Ned. Their moment together had felt profound. “And suddenly that stupid crawling hope was back, beating in his chest like a second heartbeat,” Ms. Henry informs us.
While Elliot knocks the impracticality of romance, the three women in his family urge him to find himself. I love how Ms. Henry describes that peculiar insanity foisted on us by lust. Can Elliot emerge as a man who takes care of himself, as well as others, a man who knows his mind?
Lisa Henry’s prose, her plot, her characters’ eccentric imperfections, and her faith in humanity give readers perspective. We are encouraged to transcend grief’s tediousness, and to renew faith in our spirits’ resilience.
“Not everything was a technicolor extravaganza, and that was fine too. It was all right to find small joys in small moments. It was all right to have small dreams. Those held a comfort that his mother and sisters would never understand. That his father never had. It was all right,” Elliott thinks to himself.
Rescue does come, in the form of Henry's manager, who asks the family to arrange a retrospective art show…. The proceeds can help the family enormously. But, in New York, Elliot and Marianne discover many deceptions they must both overcome. Elliot’s reaction? “This wasn’t heartbreak. This was the humiliating realization that he’d been stupid.”
Ms. Henry’s off-hand observations are a sensory delight. “A thin sliver of light spilled through a tiny gap, lying across the floor like the blade of a knife.” But her wisdom spins a web of hope through Elliot’s desolate grief. “And that was love, wasn’t it? Maybe it wasn’t chemistry, or fate, of the adventure of a lifetime. Maybe love was, at its simplest, optimism. Maybe love was choosing to believe that it would all work out in the end.”
Using same/similar names, The California Dashwoods updates Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for current readers with modern financial, gender, and sexual values. Rather than examine appropriate conduct, Ms. Henry focuses on our skewed emotional logic, the distorted sense that pleasure is fleeting while pain endures forever.
Lisa Henry’s prose, her plot, her characters’ eccentric imperfections, and her faith in humanity give readers perspective. We are encouraged to transcend grief’s tediousness, and to renew faith in our spirits’ resilience. In an age when truth is suspect, when grief swells while hope waivers, this transformation was an amazing feat! If you doubt your ability to risk love, this five heart book is for you.
A copy of The California Dashwoods was provided to Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter, by IndiGo Marketing & Design, at no cost and with no expectations in return. We offer our fair and honest opinion on behalf of our readers.
Meet the Author
Lisa Henry likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied history and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.
For more from Lisa be sure and visit her website!
