Penitence by Jennifer Laurens

I throughly enjoyed the follow up to HEAVENLY and yet again my tissues came in handy while I was reading.
With the ending of HEAVENLY you are left wondering what happens to Zoe, did she die or was she brought back to the world of living or was her soul taken hell? PENITENCE answers most of your questions that you had at the end of HEAVENLY but I'm still hanging onto some unanswered questions.

We watched Zoe grow as a person in HEAVENLY but after her accident in PENITENCE she takes a huge growth spurt and learns to love the people around her no matter what and one of the lessons I was able to take away from the book that forgiveness can help the healing process. For example, Zoe forgave the Hank for the accident even though she was badly injured she felt that she was alive and what was the point of carrying anger when he might be feeling the feeling the guilt of his actions and if he wasn't it didn't phase her one bit.
I know from personal experience that sometimes forgiving can be hard but if it helps lift some of the weight off your shoulders why shouldn't we try it?

I also noticed a tiny change in Luke on how he was more present in the family life but still had his problems with drugs that he seemed to be trying to quit for the best of himself and his family. There wassomething that Jennifer pointed out to us in the book that when stress is present in an addict's life it's pretty easy to relapse to feel that slight release from the drama of their world and we see how Luke is trying to win the battle and how Zoe understands it but still wishes that her brother could stop for the sake ofhimself firstly and for the rest of the family considering what they have been through.

We also get to see a dark side to the story, that Jennifer mentioned in HEAVENLY and I found pretty fascinating how the evil was portrayed by a character we where slighly intoduced to in HEAVENLY and I must say he scared me. From the moment he came onto the scene i didn't trust him but Zoe seemed to at first but things clicked in her head with the help of Matthias :) We see how evil plays apart in all our lives but what I liked about the storyline is that Jennifer was able to makeit both frightening and realistic at the same time-I hope I don't sound crazy.

I better sign off before I ruin the entriebook *BLUSH*

Happy Reading :)

Gillian
xxx

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