Marrying Mozart
Stephanie Cowell, 2004
Penguin Group USA
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143034575

Summary
Mannheim, 1777. The four Weber sisters, daughters of a musical family, share a crowded, artistic life in a ramshackle house. Their father scrapes by as a music copyist; their mother keeps a book of prospective suitors hidden in the kitchen. The sisters struggle with these marriage prospects as well as their musical futures—until one evening at their home, when 21-year-old Wolfgang Mozart walks into their lives.

No longer a prodigy and struggling to find his own place in the music world, Mozart is enthralled with the Weber sisters: Aloysia's beauty and talent captivates him; Josefa's rich voice inspires him; Sophie becomes his confidante; and Constanze comes to play a surprising role in his life.

Eighteenth-century Europe comes alive with unforgiving winters and yawning princes; scheming parents and the enduring passions of young talent. Set in Mannheim, Munich, Salzburg and Vienna, Marrying Mozart is the richly textured love story of a remarkable historical figure—and four young women who engaged his passion, his music, and his heart. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—N/A
• Awards—American Book Award
• Currently—lives in New York City

In her words
I was born in New York City to a family of artists and fell in love with Mozart, Shakespeare and historical fiction at an early age. I began printing stories in a black and white school notebook at about nine years old and in my teens wrote several short novels which remain in a dark box. I learned something though, because by twenty, I had twice won prizes in a national story contest.

Then I left writing for classical singing. I sang in many operas and appeared as an international balladeer; I formed a singing ensemble, a chamber opera company, and so on. The translation of a late Mozart opera returned me to writing once more and I now mostly sing while washing the dishes!

My first published novel was Nicholas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest. That work was followed by two other Elizabethan 17th-century novels: The Physician of London (American Book Award 1996) and The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare. In 2004, I returned to my musical background and wrote Marrying Mozart; it has been translated into seven languages and optioned for a movie.

I am married to poet and reiki practitioner Russell Clay and have two grown sons (one in computer systems design and one a filmmaker). I was born in New York City and am still living here, a short walk away from all the impressionist paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews
[Cowell's] Mozart tale is a perfect harmony of fact, fiction. [It is] a charming novel, so much so that one would enjoy it even if the gentleman involved in these girls' lives were not one of the greatest geniuses in the history of music.
Los Angeles Times


Former opera singer Cowell, whose previous novel (1997's The Players) explored the apprenticeship years of a callow Shakespeare, turns her eye to the women in the life of a young Mozart in her fourth graceful and entertaining historical. Music copyist Fridolin Weber and his socially ambitious wife, Marie Caecilia, have four daughters-bookish and devout Sophie; quiet Constanze; beautiful, silver-voiced Aloysia; and headstrong Josefa-whom they struggle to keep in hats and hose. Though the freethinking girls may wonder about the benefits of marrying well vs. marrying for love, Caecilia, whose family once had money, is terrified of growing old a pauper. Pinning her hopes on her prettiest daughter, 16-year-old Aloysia, Caecilia aims for a Swedish baron as suitor (though she keeps a list of backups in a notebook). Aloysia falls in love with the young Mozart, however, who happily returns her affections, though he, too, wonders about marrying better to support his father and beloved mother. But when the Webers move to Munich from Mannheim, Caecilia's hopes for good matches begin to dim, as Josefa takes a married lover and a pregnant Aloysia runs away with a painter who, along with Mozart, had been boarding with the family. As Mozart progresses in his career, he has relationships with the other Weber sisters, too, and falls alternately in and out of favor with their bitter old mother. Told through the recollections of an aging Sophie, the tale is as rich and unhurried as 18th-century court life.
Publishers Weekly


Long before Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber, his musical and personal life was intertwined with her family. In Cowell's fourth historical novel (after Nicholas Cooke, The Players, and The Physician of London), Sophie, the youngest of the four Weber sisters, shares the story with an English biographer visiting Austria. As she recalls events from 60 years earlier that reveal how the sisters influenced Mozart's music, readers are drawn into a world rich in music but poor in material goods. Herr Weber ekes out a living by giving music lessons and performances; his weekly gatherings assemble famous and aspiring musicians, including Mozart. While the elder daughters, Josefa and Aloysia, both possess wonderful singing voices, it is Aloysia, with her remarkable beauty, who wins the public's adoration (not to mention Josefa's jealousy). After Herr Weber's early death, Frau Weber schemes to marry her daughters into wealth, but her harsh demands drive the family apart. Because Mozart's family depends on his earnings, his father blocks early marriage, a delay that costs Mozart Aloysia and haunts the composer for years. Cowell vividly brings to life not only the Webers and the Mozarts but also dozens of minor characters and their era. Fans of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring will relish this exploration of family demands and the creative drive. Recommended for all public libraries. —Kathy Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Library Journal


A fourth outing by New York soprano and novelist Cowell (The Players, 1997, etc.) re-creates the situation that led up to Mozart's marriage. Based on true events, this is the story of the prodigy who, at 21, is just beginning to make a name for himself as a serious composer. Unhappily engaged as a court composer for the Archbishop-Prince of Salzburg, Mozart leaves the bishop's employ in 1777 and begins to travel throughout Europe with his beloved, ambitious mother. In Mannheim, the two visit the home of Fridolin Weber, an impoverished musician whose four daughters (Josefa, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie) are as renowned for their musical talents as for their beauty. Mozart eventually becomes a lodger in the Weber home and a fixture in that family's life. Fridolin's wife Maria, a shabby-genteel sort who nurses memories of her fine upbringing and dreams of recovering her lost position in society, wastes no time in sizing up the young Mozart as a good prospect for a son-in-law-although not in the same league with the Swedish count they're also trying to reel in. Before long, Mozart is engaged to Aloysia, but this ends unhappily when it turns out the young lady is pregnant by another boarder (a painter). The brokenhearted Mozart leaves Mannheim and throws himself into his work, but he has a change of heart in the end and returns to the Weber house to marry Constanze and live out the rest of his life with her—fairly happily, too. Cowell frames the story by relating much of it as a memoir, recalled by Sophie in 1842 at the behest of Mozart's English biographer Vincent Novello. With its frequent changes in locale and abrupt switches in the objects of affection, the tale is reminiscent of nothing so much as an opera—appropriately enough. A delight, at once fanciful and erudite: should be richly satisfying to Mozart buffs and fascinating to those in the outer circle as well.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. How does the Mozart of this novel compare to your previous idea of him?

2. Discuss how each of the Weber sisters in turn affects Mozart and his music. How does Mozart, his choices, and his passions change over the course of the novel?

3. Of the four Weber sisters—Josefa, Aloysia, Constanze, and Sophie—who do you think would have ultimately made the best wife for Mozart? Are you content with the choice he made?

4. Much of the story rests on the fact that women were wholly dependent on their fathers and husbands for financial security. The fact that the two oldest daughters, Josefa and Aloysia, are able to earn their own incomes as singers made them more independent and rebellious than the two younger sisters. How do you think each of the sisters would have been different had they lived in modern times?

5. Josefa and Aloysia are rendered as complete opposites from one another, and also from their younger siblings. Constanze is also depicted as quiet and reserved whereas Sophie is fearless and outgoing. Discuss the many differences between the girls, and the surprising similarities.

6. What effect do Fridolin and Maria Caecilia Weber have on each of their daughters, for better or worse?

7. Both the Weber girls and Mozart are expected to make advantageous marriages to help support their parents. Yet they are each desperate to make their own way in the world on their own terms. Discuss the role of duty between parents and children of the time.

8. Discuss the rebellious nature of Mozart's choices. In leaving the security of the Archbishop and marrying for love instead of money, he makes risky and potentially disastrous gambles.

9. How is different is Sophie (our narrator) as a young girl and as an elderly woman? What do you imagine her life was like?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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How Green Was My Valley
Richard Llewellyn, 1939
Simon & Schuster
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780684825557

In Brief 
Set in Wales in the late Victorian era (the precise time is never clear), How Green Was My Valley tells the story of the Morgans, a poor but respectable mining family of the South Wales valleys, through the eyes of the youngest son, Huw Morgan.

Huw's academic ability sets him apart from his elder brothers and enables him to consider a future away from this troubled industrial environment. His five brothers and his father are miners; after the eldest brother, Ivor, is killed in an industrial accident, Huw moves in with his sister-in-law, Bronwen, with whom he has always been in love. Later, Huw's father is also killed in the mine. One of Huw's three sisters, Angharad, makes an unhappy marriage to a wealthy mine owner and never overcomes her clandestine relationship with the local minister.

After everyone Huw has known either dies or moves away, he decides to leave as well, and tells us the story of his life just before he does. (From Wikipedia.)

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About the Author 

• Birth—December 8, 1906
• Where—Hendon, Middlesex, England, UK
• Death—November 30, 1983
• Where—Dublin, Ireland, UK

Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd, better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was a Welsh novelist.

Llewellyn was born Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd of Welsh parents in Hendon, Middlesex in 1906. Only after his death was it discovered that his claim that he was born in St. Davids, West Wales was false.

Several of his novels dealt with a Welsh theme, the best-known being How Green Was My Valley (1939), which won international acclaim and was made into a classic Hollywood film. It immortalised the way of life of the South Wales Valleys coal mining communities, where Llewellyn spent a small amount of time with his grandfather. Three sequels followed.

He lived a peripatetic life, travelling widely throughout his life. Before World War II, he spent periods working in hotels, wrote a play, worked as a coal miner and produced his best known novel. During World War II, he rose to the rank of Captain in the Welsh Guards. Following the war, he worked as a journalist, covering the Nuremberg Trials, and then as a screenwriter for MGM. Late in his life, he lived in Eilat, Israel.

Protagonists who assume new identities, often because they are transplanted into foreign cultures, are a recurring element in Llewellyn's novels, including a spy adventure (Edmund Trothe) that extends through several volumes.

Llewellyn married twice: his first wife was Nona Sonstenby, whom he married in 1952 and divorced in 1968, and his second wife was Susan Heimann, whom he married in 1974.

Richard Llewellyn died on 30 November 1983. (From Wikipedia.)

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Critics Say . . . 
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reivews online. For more, see Amazon and Barnes & Noble customer reviews.)

A story of exquisite distinction and vibrant interest; clear and strong as the music under the sky.
New York Times

Llewellyn's tale of a young boy's coming-of-age in a Welsh mining village—the source for the beloved John Ford film of the same name—is "a beautiful story told in words that have Welsh music in them...a book that will live in the mind and memory of its readers.
Atlantic Monthly

In characterization, in vigorous scenes, in the picture of the everyday life of the family and the village, in tragic scenes and in festive ones, the book cuts deep into our hearts. It is a profoundly moving story, realistic and yet poignantly lyrical...[with the] simplicity of a peasant saga and occasional over-playing of the heroic.... The story is told by Huw Morgan, looking back from the vantage point of old age to the days of his youth, as one of a large family, when "green was my valley"—and his language is still tinged with the almost Biblical overtones of his people. Don't overlook this book.
Kirkus Reviews

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Book Club Discussion Questions 

Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for How Green Was My Valley: 

1. Talk about the character of Huw Morgan—whose better angel often gives way to his lesser one.

2. Think about the ways in which the novel pits the strength of family unity against the dissolution of community and progress. How does the narrator view the idea of progress?

2. The book's characters question their religious beliefs. As a child, Huw wonders how Jesus could be divine, and after his fathers death, Huw's mother renounces her belief altogether. How would you answer Huw and his mother?

3. What is the significance of the slag pile, a phrase which Llewellyn took initially as the novel's title?

4. Many have commented on the book's poetic language. Talk specifically about the book's use of Welsh dialect. What was Llewellyn's purpose? Did it enhance or detract from your reading experience?

5. Do you feel the issues raised in the book have relevance to today—particularly environmentalism, the labor movement, and corporate governance.

6. Discuss Mr. Gryffyd's decision to resign his post as pastor? Was he correct to do so? Were there other options?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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Ordinary People 
Judith Guest, 1976
Penguin Group USA
263 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780140065176


Summary 
The novel begins as life is seemingly returning to normal for the Jarretts of Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1975. It is slightly more than a year since the elder of their two teenaged sons, Jordan (nicknamed "Buck"), was killed when a sudden storm came up while he and his younger brother Conrad were sailing on Lake Michigan.

Six months later, a severely depressed Conrad attempted suicide by slashing his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. His parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital from which he has only recently returned. He is attending school and trying to resume his life, but knows he still has unresolved issues, particularly with his mother, Beth, who has never really recovered from Jordan's death and keeps an almost maniacally perfect household and family.

His father, a successful tax attorney, gently leans on him to make appointments to see a local psychiatrist, Dr. Tyrone Berger. Initially resistant, he slowly starts to respond to Dr. Berger and comes to terms with the root cause of his depression ... his identity crisis and survivor's guilt over having survived when Buck did not. Also helping is a relationship with a new girlfriend, Jeannine Pratt.

Calvin, too, sees Dr. Berger as the events of the recent past have caused him to begin to doubt many things he once took for granted, leading to a midlife crisis. This leads to strain in the marriage as he finds Beth increasingly cold and distant, while she in turn believes he is overly concerned about Conrad to the point of being manipulated.

Spoiler
Finally the friction becomes enough that Beth decides to leave him at the novel's climax. Father and son, however, have closed the gap between them. (Summary from Wikipedia.)

Author Bio 
• Birth—1936
• Where—Detroit, Michingan, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Michigan
• Awards—Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize, 1976
• Currently—Minneapolis, Minnesota; Harrisville, Michigan

Judith Guest won the Janet Heidegger Kafka Prize for her first novel, Ordinary People, which was made into the Academy Award-winning 1980 film of the same name. Her other novels are The Tarnished Eye, Second Heaven, Killing Time in St. Cloud (with Rebecca Hill), and Errands. She lives with her family in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Harrisville, Michigan. (From the publisher.)

More
Her own words: 

I was born in 1936 in Detroit, Michigan and grew up there, attending Mumford High School in my freshman year and graduating from Royal Oak Dondero High school in 1954. I studied English and psychology at the University of Michigan and graduated with a BA in Education in 1958, whereupon I promptly...

a) got married to my college sweetheart, 
b) got a job teaching first grade in Garden City, Michigan 
c) got pregnant and had a baby boy—all inside 14 months.

I have been writing all of my life—since I was about ten years old, actually—in the closet, to the emotional moment, sticking reams of paper in drawers, never finishing anything. I taught more school, had two more sons and then in 1970 I wrote a short story and sent it to a national contest, where I won 60th prize out of 100. It was a book by Richard Perry entitled One Way to Write Your Novel. I read it from cover to cover and decided I already knew all this stuff, so why didn’t I just write a novel myself? It took me three years, during which time I decided to quit teaching and concentrate on finishing something. In retrospect, it was the most important decision I’ve made to date about my writing.

After I finished Ordinary People, I sent it to a publisher, who turned it down flat. The second sent a rejection letter that read in part: “While the book has some satiric bite, overall the level of writing does not sustain interest and we will have to decline it.” (I know this letter by heart—didn’t even have to look it up.) The third publisher, Viking Press, hung onto it for 8 months before they decided to publish it. They published my second novel (Second Heaven), turned down my third (Killing Time in St. Cloud), so I went to Delacorte. Delacorte turned down my fourth (Errands), so I went to Ballantine (which had turned down my first one). Ballantine turned down my fifth (The Tarnished Eye) so I went to Scribner. This is the book business in a nutshell. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

My private life is a bit more varied and exciting. I have a husband and three sons and seven grandchildren who all live here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We see them often, summer together, and do an assortment of family things. They are my real life—my obsession and my best material.

I think I should also say that I am the great-niece of Edgar A. Guest, who was at one time the Poet Laureate of Michigan and who wrote a poem a day for the Detroit Free Press for forty years. Which is where I get my endurance from. I can write for a long time on one novel and not get tired. (From the author's website.)

Book Reviews 
(Pre-internet works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Eight months before the opening of this novel, Conrad Jarrett has attempted suicide.... What Ms. Guest's novel focuses on is Conrad's attempts to knit himself back into the fabric of suburban middle-American life.... It is with admirable skill that the author has made us experience Con's emergence from isolation.... But what is most touching about Ordinary People is the subtle degrees by which Conrad recovers his emotional elquibrium....What we experience in the process is not so much the relief of sudden revelation as the anxiety, despair, and joy of healing that is common to every human experience of suffering and growth.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - New York Times

It is difficult to realize that this is a first novel, because it is written with the simplicity of total authority.... I am particularly grateful to Ms. Guest for emphasizing the human need for open grieving…(She) is one of the few writers who has dared depict this aspect of affluent suburbia.
Madeleine L’Engle (author, A Wrinkle in Time)

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Ordinary People:

1. Why the title? Clearly, it has thematic significance. I think a good discussion can be had by asking what Guest meant by her use of "ordinary." Is it ironic...or sincere. In other words are the Jarretts an ordinary family? How so...or how not so?

2. In the introduction above , Guest says she "wanted to explore the anatomy of depression." Does she do a good job? How realistic is her portrayal of what has become a much discussed mental health issue.

3. You might also trace Conrad's path to health, which is the crux of the story. What are the steps in his process of recovery.

4. Obviously, you'll want to discuss Beth Jarrette—on the surface an unsympathetic character. But Guest's characters are complex, rich in their emotional and psychological make-ups. Try to ascertain Beth's underlying motivations.

5. As Conrad's health improves, Calvin's relationship with Beth deteriorates. Are those two events related? What's going on, or not going on, in that marriage.

6. Watch selected clips from the superb 1980 movie with Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Southerland, and Timothy Hutton as Conrad. Directed by Robert Redford, it swept up the major film awards.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)


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Something Blue 
Emily Giffin, 2005
St. Martin's Press
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312323868


Summary
Darcy Rhone thought she had it all figured out: the more beautiful the girl, the more charmed her life. Never mind substance. Never mind playing by the rules. Never mind karma.

But Darcy’s neat, perfect world turns upside down when her best friend, Rachel White, the plain-Jane “good girl,” steals her fiancé, while Darcy finds herself completely alone for the first time in her life…with a baby on the way.

Darcy tries to recover, fleeing to her childhood friend living in London and resorting to her tried-and-true methods for getting what she wants. But as she attempts to recreate her glamorous life on a new continent, Darcy finds that her rules no longer apply. It is only then that Darcy can begin her journey toward self-awareness, forgiveness, and motherhood.

Something Blue is a novel about one woman’s surprising discoveries about the true meaning of friendship, love, and happily-ever-after. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever, even secretly, wondered if the last thing you want is really the one thing you need. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—March 20, 1979
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Raised—Naperville, Illinois
• Education—B.A., Wake Forest University; J.D., University of Virginia
• Currenbtly—lives in Atlanta, Georgia


Emily Giffin is the bestselling American author of eight novels commonly categorized as "chick lit." More specifically, Giffin writes stories about relationships and the full array of emotions experienced within them.

Giffin earned her undergraduate degree at Wake Forest University, where she also served as manager of the basketball team, the Demon Deacons. She then attended law school at the University of Virginia. After graduating in 1997, she moved to Manhattan and worked in the litigation department of Winston & Strawn. But Giffin soon determined to seriously pursue her writing.

In 2001, she moved to London and began writing full time. Her first young adult novel, Lily Holding True, was rejected by eight publishers, but Giffin was undaunted. She began a new novel, then titled Rolling the Dice, which became the bestselling novel Something Borrowed.

2002 was a big year for Emily Giffin. She married, found an agent, and signed a two-book deal with St. Martin's Press. While doing revisions on Something Borrowed, she found the inspiration for a sequel, Something Blue.

In 2003, Giffin and her husband left England for Atlanta, Georgia. A few months later, on New Year's Eve, she gave birth to identical twin boys, Edward and George.

Something Borrowed was released spring 2004. It received unanimously positive reviews and made the extended New York Times bestsellers list. Something Blue followed in 2005, and in 2006, her third, Baby Proof, made its debut. No new hardcover accompanied the paperback release of  in 2007. Instead, Giffin spent the year finishing her fourth novel and enlarging her family. Her daughter, Harriet, was born May 24, 2007.

More novels:
2008 - Love the One You're With
2010 - Heart of the Matter
2012 - Where We Belong
2014 - The One & Only
2016 - First Comes Love
(Author bio adapted from Wikipedia.)

Visit the author's website.
Follow Emily on Twitter.

Book Reviews
Highly entertaining.... Despite a happy ending, Giffin raises thorny questions. A long friendship can (like marriage) turn claustrophobic or abusive. Is infidelity the solution? And why are pretty girls so easily taken in by scheming Plain Janes?
Boston Globe

Giffin’s plotting and prose are so engaging that she quickly becomes a fun, friendly presence in your reading life.
Chicago Sun-Times

Witty and compelling, Something Blue reaffirms a lesson we all should have learned long ago: Love doesn’t need a fairy tale, fancy wrapping or a big price tag. Often, it’s better without.
Charlotte Observer

Darcy is Scarlett O’Hara set in modern [day].... Giffin orchestrates her gradual change ingeniously and successfully answers any Gone With the Wind fan who wondered if, after Rhett Butler decided he didn’t give a damn, Scarlett ever morphed into someone softer.
Newark Star-Ledger

Giffin's writing is warm and engaging; readers will find themselves cheering for Darcy as she proves people can change in this captivating tale. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist

Giffin's sophomore effort—which tells the story that her bestselling Something Borrowed did from a different character's point of view—stars such an unsympathetic narrator that it's a little like reading a Cinderella story featuring one of the wicked stepsisters. Perhaps beautiful Darcy Rhone isn't really wicked, but she is one of the most shallow, materialistic, self-centered and naïve 29-year-olds around. Ostensibly a high-powered PR person in Manhattan (though she never seems to work), Darcy spends most of her time shopping, partying and getting ready for her wedding to perfect guy Dex. But an alcohol-fueled Hamptons fling with one of Dex's pals, Marcus, starts to break Darcy's perfect life down; and discovering Dex hiding in her best friend Rachel's closet really shatters it. Pregnant with Marcus's baby, Darcy decamps for London, where she crashes in high school pal Ethan's flat and annoys the heck out of him with her endless shopping and complete disregard for her impending mother-hood. But after a good lecture from Ethan, whom Darcy has started to fall for a little, Darcy embarks on a self-improvement plan, thereby demonstrating she can think about someone besides herself. And if readers don't mind the first 200 pages in which she doesn't, they'll enjoy her happy ending and the few surprises along the way. Fans of Something Borrowed, too, may relish the "she said, she said" fun.
Publishers Weekly

Discussion Questions
1. Many readers of Something Borrowed expressed doubts at being able to read and enjoy a book from Darcy’s point of view. Were you reluctant to read her story? Did your feelings about her ever change? If so, at what point in the story?

2. What do you view as Darcy’s greatest weakness? Could this also be considered her greatest strength? If so, how?

3. What do you think caused Darcy’s breakup with Marcus? Do you think Marcus was more or less responsible for it than Darcy?

4. In many ways this is a story about personal growth and transformation. Do you think people can fundamentally change? How difficult did it seem for Darcy to change? What role did Ethan play in those changes? What role did her pregnancy play?

5. What do you think would have become of Darcy if she had not become pregnant? If she hadn’t gone to London? What do you think some of the key differences in living life in London as opposed to New York? Do you think some of these differences helped Darcy evolve?

6. How do you think Darcy’s relationship with her mother played a role in the person she was?

7. In what ways are Dex, Marcus, and Ethan different? In what ways are they similar? Do you think their similarities are true of men in general?

8. Where do you see Darcy and Rachel in five years? Ten?

9. If you were Darcy, would you have been able to forgive Rachel? Would you have invited her to your wedding? Do you feel there is a line that can be crossed in friendship, where forgiveness isn't possible?

10. What are your views regarding the closing sentences of the book: “Love and friendship. They are what make us who we are, and what can change us, if we let them"?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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