Overall Grade: A+
Tropes: surprise baby; novella; found family
As a novella form goes, Kristen Ashley’s surprise release, Sharing the Miracle, is a treasure. I adore Kristen Ashley as an author in how she mixes the unreality of life through the ways she expounds on designer clothing and extravagant living with the reality of life: messy relationships and situations. In this newest story, she returns us to Hale and Elsa, one of the most profound stories in her beloved River Rain series. In this book, Hale and Elsa receive surprise news: a baby. What Kristen Ashley does with the short space of this novella is inspired. She illustrates the profundity of female relationships in discussing and processing female issues, the largesse of a found family for a character who is seemingly alone but not really, and the reality of the emotional daring required of parents. But it was Sharing the Miracle that truly showed me the underlying and decided detail of the River Rain series: Kristen Ashley’s knowledge and capacity for drawing the unevenness of grief. Kristen Ashley’s talent in storytelling is marrying fiction with the realism of life. I realized as I teared up over Hale’s experiences with grief that she captures so beautifully the complications we encounter as we continue to live after the loss of someone we love. It’s the ups and downs of that grief that make it palpable and ever-present. I reflected on the stories thus far in the River Rain series as I was reading Sharing the Miracle, and I recognized this to be true of every character of the series thus far. Life must be lived with or without Corey, and his absence as life goes on lays heavy on the various characters of this series. That Kristen Ashley can capture that reality without heavy-handedness but with a quietude through the development of her narrative is exquisite and impressive and another important reason to dive into her stories.
Can Sharing the Miracle be read alone? Sure, but you’d be missing the gradient of color that is the prism of the River Rain series. If you have yet to jump into this world, don’t wait. Hale and Elsa’s story in Fighting the Pull will always be my favorite story of this series, and this inspired novella is the frosting on the delectable cake of their romance.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 