REVIEW FOR THE ART OF LOVE BY ANNE WHITNEY

RATING: 5 STARS

Love- 1) strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; 2) unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another. Meaning from Merriam-Webster Dictionary


Love can mean so much in so many different ways to so many different people, but what if your life was void the term and phrase we as a society uses to express how we feel for another? What if you never got the chance to experience love when we first encounter it from our parents at birth? That’s something Marina Phillips has had to endure for the past 20 years of her life in the book, “The Art of Love”, by Anne Whitney.

When we first encounter Marina, she has come to grips that she done with the firm and brutal control that has plagued her life for so long…her father. She decides to leave the nightmare that is her hometown of Spokane,Washington and journey for the dream of new and fresh start in New York City. With close to $7 to her name, where is she suppose to go and what the hell is she expecting to do in NYC? Needless to say, Marina gets an unconventional introduction to the big apple by the way of Fitz! He is a performance artist with daddy issues of his own. He is tall, muscular and covered with tattoos (my kind of man. My weakness is a man with an edge covered in tattoos…damn…sorry back to the review!) Now this is not just any performance. Fitz is buck ass naked, spots Marina across the room and starts to bump and grind (in an artistic way of course) against her during the show. WELCOME TO NYC MARINA! After that they struck up a friendship and kindred spirit with one another.

What I loved about this book is that Marina is not the typical sexy, exotic beauty and waif thin girl that seems to exist in a lot of books I’ve been reading. No, Marina is a down to earth kind of a girl, a bit homely but still beautiful in her own right. Fitz is the kind of guy that will literally take the shirt off his back to help you out. When Marina has no place to go he lets her stay with him and after a few days you see him start to care for her deeply. But she has some reservations, especially after it is made known by her father to the public that she is missing and is searching all over to find her. After that she takes on a whole new look and identity. You see her start to become the strong and independent gal she has been longing to be. Now is Fitz falling for Marina or her new persona, Mary?

With being under someone’s control for so long, Marina never got the chance to experience a lot in her life, especially love. For once in a book, the heroine wasn’t completely and utterly in love with the male character after only knowing him for a few days. Marina made that perfectly clear in the book. Not to say she didn’t care for him and wasn’t attracted to him, but she most certainly was! She’s been through years of abuse, how is she suppose to love someone so easily without loving herself completely first? We all this know…if ANY relationship is EVER going to work, your love for yourself has to be evident first and foremost. With that being said, once again another REALISTIC happily ever after from an author. Love is truly never easy, but if it’s something you want, then it is something you have to work and fight for. This book had its very funny and very sad moments. C’mon what more could you ask for. Loved this book! 5 out of 5 for me. Later!

-Lynne