SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY

By

Lisa Verge Higgins

Synopsis

A new novel of women's friendship from the author of Random Acts of Kindness that will appeal to fans of Kristin Hannah, Luanne Rice, and Karen White.
Tess has a secret. For fifteen years she has been furtively following  the life of the daughter she gave up as an infant for adoption.  But  when Sadie runs away from home determined to find her birth mother, Tess  has no choice but to hunt down the desperate girl in the one place she
dreads--Pine Lake, where a terrible, buried secret threatens to destroy  them both.

Preview

I spent this last month in the company of a group of good friends and Lisa Higgins at Goodreads.  Deb Haupt hosted a month long read for Senseless Acts of Beauty on the General Fiction Forum Expats Group.  As always, the group was a rollicking discussion across the airwaves and between Continents as we worked our way through the book with Lisa and Deb.

Review

Lisa has become known for her Women’s Fiction and novels that address issues that strike the very core of women’s hearts and the essence of who we are.  She seems to be able to crawl into our psyche and address the very issues we are most afraid to address.  She brings them to life with her special magic and a modicum of levity and heart, then she nails us between the eyes with the reality of life.

With Senseless Acts of Beauty, Lisa took the bare bones of our human need to be accepted and loved.  She addressed our basic need to have a safe place to call home and nailed the story to the barn wall. She has captured the very essence of the fear, the anxiety, the confusion, the sadness, the loneliness, and most of all the "lostness" of kids that just don't feel like they truly belong.

There are the lucky ones that are truly loved at home.  But then there are those like Tess, where home was just a Wrecking Derby. “Love” was a “longed for dream” that she really did not know what it really was, and if and when someone showed her a basic kindness, she ran for the hills. She did not know how to receive or reciprocate those emotions of tender feelings -- they were truly foreign. The one time in her life that she actually found and felt those feelings was with Riley's grandparents.

I love the way Lisa uses words and finds symbolism in imagery within her stories. It broadens the visual experience of her novels.  So many times when words will fail to get an emotion across, simple visual imagery will send us across vast wonders of beauty or terror that will bring that emotion the writer is trying to describe pouring from our souls.  Lisa is a master at this and utilized it often in the pages of this book.  She was also capable of letting her "geek" escape, and sending this reader on a trip to google to discover some new source that I had forgotten about or had yet to know.  (I love it when the “geek” escapes and we all learn something new.

In the end, once again, Lisa led us all to the discovery of the power of love, and that love can conquer all.  I think that is why I find her stories so habit forming and why I keep watching for them next new book at the bookstore.  

About the Author

Lisa Verge Higgins is the RITA-nominated author of seventeen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages--quite a switch for this former PhD candidate in chemistry. A mother of three, this five-time RT Book Awards finalist has won the Golden Leaf, The Bean Pot, and twice has been anointed by Barnes & Noble's General Fiction Forum for their top twenty novels-of-the-year. Her stories about women’s lives and women’s friendships have been described by critics as “joyous,” “uplifting,” “full of humor, love and life lessons,” and “inspire us to focus on what’s really important in our lives.” When not writing stories, Lisa is reading them as a reviewer for The New York Journal of Books. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three teenage daughters, who never fail to make life interesting. 

Lisa and her books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other Indie bookstores online.