Love Walked In

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Author(s):

Marisa de los Santos

Label: Plume
Publisher(s):

Plume

Studio: Plume
Manufacturer: Plume
Binding: Paperback
Format(s): Bargain Price
List Price: $14.00

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. But little does she know that her newfound love is only the harbinger of greater changes to come. Meanwhile, across town, Clare Hobbs?eleven years old and abandoned by her erratic mother?goes looking for her lost father. She crosses paths with Cornelia while meeting with him at the café, and the two women form an improbable friendship that carries them through the unpredictable currents of love and life.

Love Walked In, the first novel by award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos, is bursting with keen insight and beautifully rendered prose. Invoking classic movies to illuminate the mystery and wonder of love in all its permutations, Love Walked In is an uplifting debut that marks the entrance of an enchanting literary voice. BACKCOVER: ?Love indeed walks in, and with it, a breath of fresh air.?
?Marie Claire

?This is a book that will be passed from friend to friend with the words, ?You have to read this.??
?Richmond Times Dispatch

?Love Walked In, by Marisa de los Santos, is the kind of book that makes you want to hunker down on a chilly day in a comfy chair and read straight through ?til dark. . . .This [is a] poignant, heart-tugging story about a single woman and a little girl who develop an unlikely bond.?
?The Washington Post Book World

?A bewitching, warmhearted grown-up fairy tale about old movies, charming princes, and finding happily ever after in the place where you?d least expect it.?
?Jennifer Weiner, author of Good in Bed, In Her Shoes, and Little Earthquakes

?Marisa de los Santos?s funny and beautifully written love story is as luminous as the silver screen.?
?Lolly Winston, author of Good Grief

?A touching, triumphant story of the power and variety and responsibility of love. A joy to read, filled with characters you wish you knew in real life. Love Walked In is every bit as engaging as the classic movies Marisa de los Santos lovingly invokes.?
?Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

?Exquisite and stylish, Love Walked In proves that love in all of its forms?romantic, friendship, familial?is all around us.?
?Sarah Jessica Parker

Customer Reviews

Promise walked out....

Marisa De Los Santos is blessed with a writer's voice that renders her protagonist a witty, passionate personality whose observations and dialogue lines jump off the page. Cornelia is spicy, clever and caring woman who, at thirty, is still searching for herself when the perfect man walks into the café she manages. But when the sheen wears off Martin's "perfection," what he leaves behind is his eleven-year-old daughter, Clare. The bond forged between Cornelia and Clare is touching. Their needs mesh well--Cornelia's to nurture, and Clare's to be mothered following the disappearance of her unstable mother.

What a great premise for a novel. What a great promise to the reader for hours of indulgence in a simply good book. And indeed, the wonderful prose kept me going. It kept me turning the pages seeking more.

But that's where the novel fizzled. In terms of plot development, it took almost third of the novel before the two main characters first came face to face. And in that span of time, the relationship between Cornelia and Martin never got far. The cracks in the potential for the great romance were gaping already before the reader became fully invested--along with Cornelia who genuinely tried to fall in love with him--in the blooming of this love story.

Reading on, though, the plot turned into pure schmaltz. The last third of the book introduced a new cast of characters that unessential to the story; tacking them on into the plot seemed forced. And the unfolding events were no more than a sweetened version of a Hallmark card. Clare breezes through the most horrific traumas a child can experience with little scars. I would have considered discussing this section of the book a spoiler had it had some credibility, but every aspect of the story simply lay flat. The prose that De Los Santos used until now to keep me going was overused to try to create excitement where none existed.

Take the death of Mrs. Goldberg. A character mentioned in passing before, an Alzheimer patient that Cornelia never even visited, was suddenly mourned with depth that was hard to emphasize with. As much prose as De Los Santos compiled postmortem on Mrs. Goldberg, the old woman never became a real person, nor was her house so "full of treasures" visualized. I wish the author had given the reader one important item to understand "the stories" that suddenly so captivated Cornelia to hijack her full attention and emotions, but which the reader still was not a part of. The obscurity of Mrs. Goldberg became more so as I wondered why name a character by a distinctly Jewish name yet strip her of any cultural or religious background that would have made her life and death authentic? (No mention of who officiated her funeral, while Cornelia attended it, her heart broken....) As Cornelia devoted herself to documenting Mrs. Goldberg's stories, the reader learned none of them other than the not particularly interesting way Mrs. G. had met her husband fifty years before.

Not to spoil the story for those readers who want to learn what happened to Clare's mother and how Cornelia's commitment to the frightened girl held up, I will not delve into my disappointment of the non-plot on these fronts.

A good editor could have pointed these out as well as some others. (e.g., Why must each leading man in this novel be so over-the-top outstandingly handsome? And why must everyone talk about these men's looks at every opportunity?) I am certain that, with some guidance, this capable author could have streamlined the story to make this book the kind of satisfying experience it first promised but failed to deliver.

Breathing Life into Love

In this novel, Marisa de los Santos breathes life into the abstract concept of love. Initially, Cornelia falls for all the cliched traps of love stories--handsome leading men, feet being swept off the floor, life-altering kisses. She's like so many of us, waiting and hoping for our chance at meeting our soulmate.

What I love about this book is Cornelia's transformation. She realizes that true love is attainable, and it is real. It is, at times, ugly and complicated. Love is hard; it cuts one to the soul. Love is romantic and familial and maternal. One's soulmate could be an old friend or a young child.

The ending is not a happy ending, but it is the only possible ending. I wanted to shake Cornelia, to tell her to change her mind, to be selfish. But her decision was the right one. She has been changed--in an earth-shattering way--and has found a purpose in life. I can't wait to read BELONG TO ME, and perhaps I will find more closure.

Good plot points, not so much for the characters

I liked this book, but I wanted more from it. The characters felt... plastic? At times my heart just screamed for them and the situations they were in, but the characters themselves... it was an odd read for me in that respect. The writing and the situations were wonderful, but the characters felt hollow and, well, made up. Yes, it's a fiction book, but I like to forget that while I'm reading.

It's definitely worth a read and might make a good Summer read for a book club. There was a lot of different issues you could talk about, just ignore the characters - they needed something more...

Is there a word stronger than both Hate and Boring but ecompasses them both?

I didnt like this book at all. I felt like, every character was soo.....I dunno, she tried way too hard to make each character overly interesting.It got kind of boring. I wanted to put the book down right after I got to clares first chapter. I didnt like the change in narration...I didnt like the cheesiness of it...or the predictability. This book was awful. I would never read it again. Also, you'd better be on your p's and q's about old movies...and pieces of literature if you're going to read this
if not, you'll be completely bored with that too. No one told me I had to take a prerequisite course before sitting down to read this.
I wanted to like this book so badly, I loved the cover and the title. I thought for sure that this was going to be my new favorite. Instead, I found myself struggling through sentences,paragraphs, pages, and chapters. This was probably the worst book Ive ever made myself read.

Angieville: LOVE WALKED IN

This is de los Santos' first novel. She is an accomplished poet and her way with words is evident throughout this charming debut. When I read the dedication, I knew this book and I would get on together. The book is dedicated to her significant other, with the lines, "You're the Nile, You're the Tower of Pisa." Ah, Cole Porter. What follows is essentially an homage to the films and film stars of the 1930s and 40s, particularly The Philadelphia Story. Not far in Cornelia, our protagonist, notes, "Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up." I nod my head, Yes, this is true. I liked Cornelia and the way she viewed her life as a film, waiting for Cary Grant to walk through her door. I liked Teo and his wonderful, warm Jimmy Stewart. I even liked Martin's flawed Cary Grant and the choice Cornelia makes between the two. In this book, refreshingly, the adults manage to take control of things at the right point, so that 10-year-old Clare is not forced to make it all come together herself. Cornelia's tiny hands held onto them all so tightly, how could they not come to love each other? I did.

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