From Now Until Forever
by Sherry Gloag
Review

FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVER

For Prince Liam, families meant bad news, unwanted commitments, and the loss of his personal freedom.

Love spawned white picket fences, slippers at the hearth with a wife and kids making demands, so why did those images disappear when he met Melanie Babcot?

Melanie Babcot fought hard to escape the horrors of her youth and vowed to remain single and free, so when paid to protect Prince Liam from insurgents why did her personal pledge fly out the window?

SHERRY GLOAG

Sherry describes herself as a ‘displaced’ Scot, who, after spending her childhood in Scotland, now lives in the beautiful East Anglian countryside of Norfolk, where she is ideally placed for her hobbies of walking, gardening and craftwork.

Like many of us, Sherry does admit to talking to her characters, although she does take a good look around first, to make sure that she is alone!

Although she has always been an avid reader of romance, it was as recently as 2009 that she wrote her first stand-alone short story, (after the challenge was laid down by her husband, who had long known about her inner desire to write).

Her debut novel The Brat was published the following year.

MEMORABLE LINES

“Princes don’t marry for love, they marry for expediency”

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“I was so busy protecting the child you were, I never fully respected the man you’d become”

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“It wasn’t as much Liam didn’t want to come home, as he didn’t recognise the door never closed behind him when he left”

REVIEW

I was making comparisons about the slightly rebellious, fictional characters in this book and the real-life characters which they might so easily depict, from just reading the synposis and without evening turning the first page.

I was worried that a book of some notional 90 pages, might well be insufficient to do the story justice. However, by the end of the book, I was pleasingly assured that Sherry had got this one just about spot on for length and content detail. She has ably managed to maintain the fine balance of an eye-catching beginning, a strong central storyline and an ending, which although could be construed as slightly inconclusive, had done its job of getting the message across to the reader, in an accomplished and polished piece of writing. If I were to highlight the one weak point in the storyline, then it would be the issue I would have with Liam never recognising Melanie when they met, even though she had been shadowing him for three years as his bodyguard. If she were that stunning, surely he would have noticed her and that she seemed to appear everywhere that he did?

The romance and marriage between Liam and Melanie wouldn’t at first glance appear to be a ‘match made in heaven’ and begged the question, was this a marriage based on lies or love? It was certainly a relationship which thrived on action and adventure, as the plot move along at a breakneck pace, complete with its unexpected twists and turns along the way, together with plenty of tension and an ongoing battle of wills between the young couple.

The characters developed and grew in strength and as the story progressed, with a new found maturity and mutual support underpinning their relationship. They were both made painfully aware of all they had to lose, including each other, causing an inner resolve and determination to rise to the surface. The couple faced Liam’s parents united, each sure in the knowledge that they were resolved to continue with their marriage, after it had survived the tissue of lies on which it had at first been based and the tumultuous hardships it had endured along the way.

I also should comment on the changing attitudes of Liam’s parents and the influence that the young couple brought to bear in this transformation. True, they had never closed the door on Liam, even when he decided, perhaps with little thought about how his actions might affect the stability and even safety of his family, that he didn’t want to conform to the conventions of his position. Their open-mindedness to change would have been an enormous step forward for them and one they would have had to embrace with some caution and forethought. The sheer fact that they were prepared to accept change to save their relationship with their son, tells me just how much family values meant to them.

There seems to be two messages which feature strongly in this story.

There is the specific message that Royalty or Titled families are, by definition and tradition, subject to a more  public scrutiny of both their public and private lives, although the younger, modern generation are rebelling against this austere regime, forcing change within the traditionalist hierarchy of the family.

Then there is the more generic message that, no matter what a child does, or where they go, the door never truly closes behind them and that when ‘the chips are down’, they are still your son or daughter and will never be completely lost to you, or disowned by you and you will probably always defend them with your last breath, in an effort to see them enjoying a happy and fulfilled life.

This romantic suspense novella was gifted as a request for me to read and leave my comments about, by it’s author Sherry Gloag and as such was free of charge.

This will in no way influence any comments I may express about the book, in any blog article I may post. Any thoughts or comments will be my own personal opinion and I am in no way being monetarily compensated for this, or any other article.

I personally do not agree with ‘rating’ a book, as the overall experience is all a matter of personal taste, which varies from reader to reader. However some review sites do demand a rating value, so when this review is posted to such a site, it will attract a 4 out of 5.

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