Title: A Reunion to Remember
Author Name & Publisher: T. J. Thomas (Bold Strokes Books)
Publication Date & Length: April 12, 2016 — 240 Pages
Jo Adams and Rhonda Black reconnect after ten years apart. Rhonda’s twin daughters were Jo’s best friends in high school. With the significant age difference, Rhonda cannot believe Jo, twenty years her junior, will want to be with her long-term.
Jo knows what she wants, but can she convince Rhonda she’s in this relationship for the long haul?
Rhonda feels caught between a desire to explore a new opportunity for love and the daughter whose response she does not understand. Can she and Jo navigate the reactions and responses of Rhonda’s family and deal with their own fears and doubts to find a lasting love?
A Reunion to Remember is a beautiful story about finding love and happiness and what one risks to stay with those that make you happiest.
In this story we meet a young Jo, who spends most of her teenage years living with her best friends due to situations at her own home. After leaving for college on the west coast, she stays on there and only comes back to her hometown for a friend’s wedding.
While there her schoolgirl crush on her high school best friends’ mom, Rhonda, reaches a boiling point and after a discussion with Rhonda, they decide to explore the feelings between them while Jo is in the area to complete a 3-month contract. Things begin to get serious, but what will the family say?
I enjoyed this beautiful story. It told a wonderful love story and I love both Jo and Rhonda! Jo was so strong and knew exactly what she wanted. I commend Rhonda for not dwelling on the fact that she was so attracted to a woman; she was more concerned about the age difference, which makes perfect sense.
I wished that we would have learned what happened to Rhonda’s previous husband, Bill, earlier in the book. It left me wondering through most of the book and it was over 60% through before we learn what happened. However, I still enjoyed the story and loved getting to know Jo and Rhonda.
Tori
I really enjoyed this book although it made me realize that I’m a hypocrite. The reason? I’m in a bit of a May-December relationship myself. I’m the May part of the relationship; my partners have always been older than I. When I read the story and put myself in Jo’s position, this is a wonderful love story. When I put myself in Rhonda’s position, I become uncomfortable. Hypocritical to the extreme. Thanks, TJ, for making me realize that I need to work on myself. Anyway, like I said, this is a wonderful love story, from their initial attraction to each other that they both try to ignore, to both deciding that they have to explore their feelings, to developing deeper feelings, and even to having to deal with the reactions of family and friends. There is a double standard in society that says when an older man is involved with a younger woman, it is proof that he is still virile, that he still has what it takes. However, society frowns on a woman getting involved with a younger partner, and I don’t think there’s much difference even when it involves two women. The scene at one of the grandkid’s basketball game where Rhonda is given the inquisition about her younger companion is proof of that; Rhonda scandalizes the gossips at the game when she doesn’t deny that they’re together. Sometimes stories point out our prejudices almost as an aside. But at the heart of things, this story is about Jo and Rhonda, and how they find happiness and home in one another. And that’s what romance is all about.
~AmyP
