A Hope Undaunted by Julie Lessman

The first in The Winds of Change series opens in 1929 in Boston with feisty Katie O’Connor, who just graduated from high school and has only a short time to play before going off to college. Her plans are to pursue a degree in Law and to eventually marry her rich, worldly boyfriend, Jack. She is ahead of her time as she wishes for a career, when women of that time were usually wives and mothers.

After breaking curfew too many times being out with her boyfriend, her father, Patrick O’Conner (from Lessman’s Daughters of Boston series) grounded her and sentenced her to work for a charitable organization all summer. There she works with Luke (Cluny) McGee, who grew up with her brothers and is now a lawyer. Much to her chagrin, she finds that she enjoys the work and comes to care for the downtrodden in the city of Boston.

If you read the three books in Daughters of Boston, you are familiar with Ms. Lessman’s plot twists and turns, and her emphasis on the spiritual. Katie was really ticked off at her dad for taking her away from her friends for three months, but this caused her to take a good look at her life plans in a different manner, one that was much better for her. She had to make decisions as to what was best and her work during the summer helped her to grow up.

The characters were realistic, the storylines were interesting, and it was a good read. It was a love story, which was nice. It included characters from the first three books, but it could be a stand-alone book, as well. There were many plot twists which kept me reading voraciously to find out what would happen next. 

There are two more books in this series: A Heart Revealed, and A Love Surrendered.

Julie Lessman will be interviewed on my blog on May 6 with a book give-away, readers’ choice of any of her books.

A Love Surrendered, Book 3 in Winds of Change