Review: Clear As Day: Babette James

Clear As Day by Babette James
Series:
Release Date:  April 4, 2012
Publisher:  The Wild Rose Press
Source:  Bewitching Book Tours
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What’s a girl to do when her summer lover wants forever?
Haunted by dark memories of her parents’ volatile marriage, artist Kay Browning keeps her heart locked behind a free-spirit facade and contents herself with the comfortable affair she has every summer with easygoing photographer Nate Quinn.
The only trouble with her plan? This summer Nate’s come to Lake Mohave to claim the lover he can’t let go. He’s done with the endless traveling and settling for temporary homes and temporary loves. Kay’s always been more than just a vacation fling, and now he must convince this woman, who sees love as a course to certain heartbreak, to take that leap of faith and learn how safe love with the right man can be.

Reviewer’s Thoughts:
For the past six years, Nate and Kay spend two week camping at Lake Mohave with their friends.  They’ve never put a label on their relationship, but it’s understood that during those two weeks they would be lovers.  This arrangement suited Kay, because she has been emotionally scarred to love and marriage by what she’s seen in her family.  But when Nate suddenly shows up and proposes to Kay, it sends her world into a tailspin.  Can she trust that Nate is who she believes him to be or will the demon from her past cause her to push away the one man who holds her heart?

This was a tough book to read, basically because of Kay.  She claimed to love her solitary life, but when it looked like she was going to be spending her two weeks in Lake Mohave by herself, she began missing her friends, especially Nate.   When Nate did appear, she crushed her happy feelings down to try and keep herself from feeling more for Nate than she was willing to.  For Kay, she couldn’t trust in her own feelings towards someone or theirs for her.  She questioned everything and kept measuring Nate’s actions and feelings against what she witnessed as a child.  Was it fair to Nate?  Absolutely not.  Did Kay know what she was doing?  Yes, but she was too afraid to trust in herself and Nate that she let those insecurities push him away.

Nate wasn’t without fault for the situation he and Kay found themselves in.  After he promised Kay he was done traveling and wanted to set down roots, he pulled the rug out from underneath her saying he was going to go on another shoot thousands of miles away.  More importantly, he never stopped to talk to Kay, a woman who was wearing is engagement ring…answer given or not, to discuss the opportunity with her.  Despite not knowing about Kay’s family and her insecurities, he played right into all the reasons why she couldn’t accept his proposal.

While it was tough to read, the emotion was real.  Babette James did an excellent job of being able to display, in words, all those little insecurities each of us has that makes us questions some of the biggest decisions of our lives.  While you read Kay’s indecision and the amount of stress she went through trying to decide what do, you felt her emotions and her stress and connected with her.  It was tough, but also gave you hope that Kay would ultimately be able to stop judging Nate by her past and look forward to her future.