Review of Two Hearts in Love
a Second Chance and Golden Years Series Novella (#4) by W. Parks Brigham
When Roz Carter, the Fearless Leader of the WOC (Women of Color) Creative Writing Group, put out the call for a group member to read and review Two Hearts in Love, I jumped at the chance to devour a fresh summer read.
However, I must admit that once I learned what the book was about — an older couple finding love late in life — I had visions of septuagenarians tottering around the assisted living facility and perhaps grinding their arthritic hipbones into dust.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised that with Two Hearts in Love, W. Parks Brigham provides a well-written, quick-reading, light and funny love story that — among other things — encourages readers to never give up on finding the love of a lifetime.
Brigham fleshes out the main characters, Maddie and John Henry so well that they move off the page giving me visions of Laurence Fishburne and Octavia Spencer or Denzel and Angela Bassett. They quickly become your favorite auntie and uncle, replete with the nostalgic cultural touches and lingo that pepper the lives of African Americans: our food, music, clothing styles, church-going habits, dominoes and bingo, barbershops, baby names, and BBQ.
The language is crisp, clean and devoid of the overly flowery and often unnecessary touches that can sometimes occur in “romance” writing.
Two Hearts is a realistic exploration of the quiet complexity of the lives of men and women in their golden years. A complexity that is often overlooked in real life. No one believes that Grandma and Grandpa still deal with loneliness, drama, and jealousy. Brigham delivers our parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and friends in all of their humanness. Her words bare their loves and losses, careers, failures and successes, dreams, insecurities, anxieties, quirks, carnal desires, longings, and celebrations. And like me, readers will find themselves quickly endeared to this couple and rooting them on.
My one complaint about this novella…too short! I want to know what’s next in the town of Blackmore, Texas and what’s next for John Henry and Maddie.
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