Summer Breeze by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman is the second in the Seasons of Marriage series based on Gary Chapman’s teachings on that subject. A lot of the same characters appear with a couple of new additions, but the focus is on Kim Finley. She divorced an abusive husband and has ten-year-old twins, one of whom was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in the last book. She is a believer but married an unsaved man, though he is far different from her first husband. Their financial situation won’t allow her to stay home while the twins are out of school for the summer, so her husband, Derek, calls his mother to come and help out.
Derek’s mother is critical and vocal and into a conglomerate of Eastern and New Age religions. She and Kim clash on various levels and Derek is caught in the middle. But instead of talking through the problems, Derek would rather ignore it all and hope it will all go away.
With differing communication styles and love languages and the pressure of Derek’s mother and Kim’s son’s diabetes, tensions continue to build until Derek and Kim’s marriage is in serious trouble.
Once again I enjoyed the back-and-forth points of view, seeing how the same situation can look totally different to two different people. And I appreciated the advice they were given and how they applied it, especially the need to truly listen to the other person rather than just promoting one’s own agenda. All in all this was a valuable book, and I enjoyed it even more than the first one. I am looking forward to the next two.
This review will be linked to Semicolon’s Saturday book reviews.
4 Comments
October 25, 2008 at 11:13 am
I had no idea Gary Chapman was doing a fiction series. I really liked his last book “Love as a Way of Life”. I think I’ll have to go check out this series. Right now I’m reading the marriage series by Gary Smalley.
October 25, 2008 at 4:01 pm
OOoohh I do believe I remember you reviewing the first one and my thinking this series sounded great. Good prompting sort of reminder. I’m still interested!
October 25, 2008 at 6:27 pm
THIS sounds realllllllly good — and something I can SO relate to! (oh – my sister has been into every weirdo religion you can think of! She belonged to one ONE time where they were only allowed to wear RED! *sigh*)
January 24, 2009 at 11:28 am
[...] January 23, 2009 by Barbara H. Falling For You Again is the third in the Four Seasons series by Catherine Palmer and Gary Chapman implementing Chapman’s teaching about seasons in marriage. I reviewed the first in the series, It Happens Every Spring, here, and the second, Summer Breeze, here. [...]