Book Review: "the Eighth Wonder" by Kimberly Young

Book Review: "the Eighth Wonder" by Kimberly Young

This Book Review post is part of the Premier Virtual Author Book Tours on behalf of Kimberly Young's book. Click on the Tour image, above, to visit the other stops on the rest of this Tour.

Publisher: Author House, January 31, 2012
Category: Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Romance
Tour Dates: February/March, 2013
Available in: Print, Kindle,  & Nook, 208 pages

About the book, from the promotional material:
A modern Bridges of Madison County, Nicole Benson, 35, is an ambitious college professor with dreams of teaching at an Ivy-League school until she meets Tom Ryan, 44, married 23 years and shattered after his daughter’s death from leukemia. A first-generation in her family to go to college,  Nicole is a self-made woman. She put herself through school, sacrificing marriage and children for her career. In the summer of 1997, she finally graduates with a Ph.D. from NYU, but her life is thrust into chaos when her father is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Abandoned by her mother as a girl, her father is all she has.
After fifteen years in New York City, Nicole leaves everything and everyone she knows to teach for a year in rural Bradford, Pennsylvania to be close to him in nearby Buffalo. Now, trapped in tiny Bradford, she has never felt more alone in her life…until she meets Tom Ryan.
At 44, Tom represents what Nicole longs to be: settled, secure, and clear about his purpose and direction in life. Emotionally scarred, he and his wife are empty nesters with an older son away at college and struggle to grieve together after the death of their daughter. Tom and Nicole’s story begins as a journey of self-discovery for both of them but turns to bittersweet romance when their friendship becomes love. Nicole risks offering what she has never given before, her heart; and Tom has never felt happier or more conflicted when he falls in love for the second time in his life.


http://youtu.be/ekTyjqDWXjU

If you haven't read her promotional literature:
Kimberly Young is a licensed psychologist, an author, and an internationally-known speaker on Internet addiction. In 1995, she founded the Center for Internet Addiction and since then she has written numerous articles on the topic including four books, Caught in the Net, Tangled in the Web, Breaking Free of the Web, and Internet Addiction: A Handbook for Evaluation and Treatment.
She is a professor at St. Bonaventure University and her work has appeared in hundreds of media outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Time, and Newsweek, and she has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and ABC World News Tonight. She has written creatively on and off since she was eight-years-old, mainly working on poems and short stories. While recovering from retina re-attachment eye surgery, she was homebound for several months and decided to pursue her creative writing more seriously. The Eighth Wonder is her first novel.
Author Website: http://kimberlyyoung.net
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kimberly-S-Young/110260432388254
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrKimberlyYoung



Dr Bill says:

Great stories with a sense of place and home draw me in quickly. The Eighth Wonder did just that. The May-November relationship between Nicole Benson and Tom Ryan was a bonus, in my view. This is a wonderful human story in a distinctive setting. What more could one ask - a story you won't soon forget!

Did you notice what remains of the bridge, in the photo of Kimberly, above?

If you have not checked out the story of the Kinzua Bridge in north-central Pennsylvania, itself, just click on the link for another fascinating story of its own.

Happy Reading,

Dr. Bill  ;-)