SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAYS: “PRETENDING TO DANCE”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by A Daily Rhythm.

Today’s featured book is an e-ARC from NetGalley:  Pretending to Dance, by Diane Chamberlain.

 

 

 

Intro:  (2014 – San Diego)

I’m a good liar.

I take comfort in that fact as Aidan and I sit next to each other on our leather sectional, so close together that our thighs touch.  I wonder if that’s too close. Patty, the social worker sitting on the other wing of our sectional, writes something in her notes, and with every scribble of her pen, I worry her words will cost us our baby.  I imagine she’s writing The couple appears to be codependent to an unhealthy degree.  As if picking up on my nervousness, Aidan takes my hand, squeezing it against his warm palm.  How can he be so calm?

“You’re both thirty-eight, is that right?”  Patti asks.

We nod in unison.

Patti isn’t at all what I expected.  In my mind I’ve dubbed her “Perky Patti.”  I’d expected someone dour, older, judgmental.  She’s a licensed social worker, but she can’t be any older than twenty-five.  Her blond hair is in a ponytail, her blue eyes are huge, and her eyelashes look like something out of an advertisement in Vogue.  She has a quick smile and bubbly enthusiasm.  Yet, still, Perky Patti holds our future in her hands, and despite her youth and bubbly charm, she intimidates me.

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Teaser:  I have no old family photographs.  I’d taken a handful with me when I left home at eighteen, but I threw them away one day when my anger got the better of me.

I wish old memories could be as easily discarded. (Loc. 450).

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Blurb:  Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She lives in San Diego with a husband she adores, and they are trying to adopt a baby because they can’t have a child on their own. But the process of adoption brings to light many questions about Molly’s past and her family-the family she left behind in North Carolina twenty years before. The mother she says is dead but who is very much alive. The father she adored and whose death sent her running from the small community of Morrison’s Ridge. Her own birth mother whose mysterious presence in her family raised so many issues that came to a head. The summer of twenty years ago changed everything for Molly and as the past weaves together with the present story, Molly discovers that she learned to lie in the very family that taught her about pretending. If she learns the truth about her beloved father’s death, can she find peace in the present to claim the life she really wants?

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?  I know I’m excited about this book, as this author is one of my favorites.

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