Review: Learning to Stay by Erin Celello

Learning to Stay by Erin Celello

Publisher: NAL Trade 

Pages: 352 

Format: eARC 

Buy the Book: Amazon  

Goodreads:  Elise Sabato is proud of her husband, Brad, for serving his country...and grateful when he returns home to her. But the traumatic brain injury he suffered in Iraq has turned him from a thoughtful, brilliant, and patient man into someone quite different....someone who requires more care and attention than Elise can give while working in a demanding law firm. And when Brad ends up on his family’s farm, hundreds of miles away, she wonders where their marriage is headed.

Elise must decide between the life she always wanted and the life she seems to be living…until she finds inspiration in the most unlikely of places: a lovable dog named Jones who teaches her that when the best-laid plans take unexpected turns, sometimes you end up right where you were meant to be.



Kritters Thoughts:  Military families is something I do not know a ton about.  Most of what I know is from tv and movies, so to read a book felt a little more real and I think allowed me to get into their home and read what feels as an honest moment in their lives.  Elise is a working woman and as her husband is sent to a war zone she spends more time developing her law career.  When he returns wounded, her life goes into a tailspin and the reader wonders if they will be able to get to a happy place.

I thought this was such an honest story about a relationship and how when truly married both people truly affect the other to the core.  Elise is greatly affected by her husband's return from war and the change that has been made to him that made him into something that she may have not married in the beginning.  Not to get too personal, but my husband changed career paths drastically before we were engaged, but thankfully we made the decision together and he hasn't affected the core of him and I wonder how I would have felt if this career change would have changed the essence of him - the parts that I love the most.  How would you react if your spouse's behavior and being changed dramatically?

This may be a contender for one of my favorite books for 2013!   

Rating: absolutely loved it and want a sequel

Ebook 2013 Challenge: 9 out of 50

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Edelweiss.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.