Another Top-Notch Book from Katherine Center

Back in 2018, I read my 1st Katherine Center book.  It was How to Walk Away, and I loved it.  Then why did it take me so long to read another one?  Beats me.  But I finally did.  It's called What You Wish for, and it's darn good.  This one hit me differently than a lot of other books do.  I was rolling along, enjoying HtWA.  I wasn't as emotionally connected as I like to be with the books I read.  But I was certainly engaged and glad I picked it.  And then...BOOM!  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  The last 65 pages I almost couldn't stop crying.  It definitely crept up on me.  So I guess I was emotionally connected after all!  Here's what the book is about:

Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and a joy for living.  But she wasn't always that way.  Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen.  But he wasn't always that way.  And Sam knows it.  Because she knew him before - at another school, in a different life.  Back then, she loved him, but she was invisible.  To him.  To everyone.  Even to herself.  She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. But then Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there. Although it feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen to Sam, it feels like the best thing that could possibly happen to the school.  Until the opposite turns out to be true.  The lovable Duncan she had known is now a suit-and-tie-wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he's willing to destroy it.  As the school community spirals into chaos, and danger from all corners looms large, Sam and Duncan must find their way to who they really are, what it means to be brave, and how to take a chance on love - which is the riskiest move of all.

Katherine not only tell a good story, she also writes well.  Here are a couple of examples of great visuals:

"I could not disguise the bizarre feeling of joy that had just appeared inside my body - like a million tiny, carbonated bubbles.  I felt positively fizzy."

"I'd try to give in just enough to satisfy the urge without actually doing it.  Like biting the corner of a chocolate bar."

She even has a scene in which Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is mentioned.  That's in my Top-12 All-Time.  Obviously a fun reference for me.

I waited a couple of years to read my 2nd Center.  But the 3rd will be making its appearance much sooner.  I've already ordered Things You Save in a Fire.  I daresay that even with the mountain-high books in my TBR pile, I will get TYSiaF near the top pretty quickly.  And there are 5 more after that!  It's a daunting proposition...but a good problem to have.