Nancy Pinard, Butterfly Soup

Butterfly Soup

Nancy Pinard

Harlequin Next, September 2006, $5.50

ISBN: 0373881061

The call from her best friend came at o'dark, informing Rose Forrester that her former lover Rob MacIntyre was back in town after years of being away. Rose panics, as no one knows that seventeen years ago when she was a teen she made love with the town's golden boy resulting in a pregnancy. Her family, neighbors, husband Everett, and her teenage daughter Valley think her spouse sired their offspring; Rose knows better.

She would prefer for Rob to leave, but her desperate efforts to drive him out of town fail, and only alienate her spouse and daughter. Rose concludes she must tell first Everett, then Valley, and finally her dad the truth about her biological father. All she can do is pray that they are forgiving of her hiding the truth from them; not realizing each one of them also has secrets that they should reveal, but fear condemnation by their loved ones.

BUTTERFLY SOUP is an insightful relationship drama, that is at its best when readers feel the mental anguish suffered by the protagonist; when the storyline turns frenzied with a desperate irrational activity it adds excitement, but loses its focus of a deep psychological study when an individual struggles with difficult choices. The cast is solid and they seem real (except those times when Rose is an out of control thorn), as each has secrets they conceal, but none has the steel to reveal even piecemeal.