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Title: Love on the Line

Author: Laura Castoro

Narrator: Susan Spain

Format: Unabridged

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-30-09

Publisher: Recorded Books

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Winner of multiple literary prizes, Laura Castoro pens novels in genres as diverse as contemporary fiction, Westerns, and period romance. Love on the Line stars unforgettable mother and daughter Thea and Jesse Morgan. Recently widowed, Thea has become a successful business woman and is now rekindling a love affair with a former star athlete-turned pastor. Meanwhile, Jesse struggles with her mixed race heritage as she tries to fit in at college.

©2008 Laura Castoro; (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

Members Reviews:

To Thine Own Self Be True

In Love On the Line, Laura Castoro writes a sweet story that deals with a delicate subject that most people do not want to talk about - the color of one's skin and peoples' perception of who they are. Corporate executive, Thea Morgan is a fair-skinned black woman who is about to marry Reverend Xavier Thornton, a former athlete who received the call to serve. Thea fell for Xavier when she was sixteen, but after a summer fling circumstances had them both going separate ways and now they have found each other again. Thea, a widow, in her mid-forties was married to a white man from a wealthy family who liked to use their influence to benefit their family. Thea's daughter, Jesse Morgan, is a biracial blue-eyed blonde about to impart on an adventure of her own, college. As each of the characters go forward to their new situations, each will be faced with unexpected challenges. One will be faced with having to make the choice between her career versus her husband's, and while she negotiates complex transactions for a living will she be able to read the real situation in her personal life and make the best deal for herself? The other character ponders whether she made the correct college choice as she contemplates her budding sexuality, the role of her racial heritage, and wonders if her happiness for her mother is a betrayal to her father along with worrying if others will find out her family connection to the college.

While Thea and Jesse are mother and daughter, and the story begins with the relationship between the two, at times, it felt like I was reading two different stories without many touch points between the two story lines. But this allowed the author to address two different racial storylines with different issues and different generations; the issues faced by a fair-skinned black woman and those faced by a biracial person in contemporary times. Because the racial storylines were well integrated into the whole situation for each of the characters, the book allows the reader to examine their own perceptions on these issues.

I found Jesse's storyline to be the more engaging story and authentic and enjoyed reading about her freshman year. While I enjoyed the secondary characters in Thea's storyline, I found the character of Xavier to be too passive for a main character. I do not doubt that Xavier was a good man but at times I felt Thea was having a conversation with herself.

This would be a wonderful book for mothers and near college-age daughters to read and discuss with each other to help prepare the daughter for her freshman year. I recommend this book to readers, who are interested in stories about mature relationships, enjoy a good woman's story without too much sex and violence and for readers of the author's prior work.

Reviewed by Beverly

APOOO BookClub

February 19, 2009

I enjoyed this book

I enjoyed this book.