Marie Ferrarella, The Second Time Around

The Second Time Around

Marie Ferrarella

Harlequin Next, Jan 2007, $5.50

ISBN: 0373881231

Forty-five-year-old realtor Laurel Mitchell feels she is fortunate as her spouse of twenty-five years Jason loves her and her him. Their three sons are doing quite well and so are they as evidenced by Jason's hobby - collecting toy trains.

Everything suddenly changes when her gynecologist Dr. Kilpatrick during Laurel's annual checkup informs her that she is pregnant. Her husband does not want to raise another child who will turn into a teen as they turn sixty. Their youngest offspring is embarrassed by the announcement. Her sister is envious as she will never have a child to raise, as her husband dumped her with no offspring. The extended Mitchell family has been hit for a loop as blue is out and pink is in.

Laurel shows how this deep look of an unexpected, life-changing event, even a supposedly rejoicing one, impacts this extended family. The spouse, the sister, the three sons and a potential fianc e to one of them are stunned to say the least as none can quite accept a forty-five-year-old woman who is not trying to become pregnant, carrying. This late-in-life pregnancy makes for a fabulous family drama though it is actually the fourth time around for Laurel; albeit a two decade gap between three and four.

Harriet Klausner