Grace is an Irish young lady who travels the ocean to find a new life in America.
When Grace arrives to New York she is captured on camera by a gentleman
and so begins her interest in still pictures.
Grace buys her first camera, a Brownie from Kodak,
to be able to take snapshots of memorable moments.
But when Grace is out in a park one day she happens to point her camera in the wrong direction
and has a run-in with local gangsters called "The Dusters."
Having had a traumatic time with the police force in her home country,
Grace is hesitant to seek help from the New York Police department.
Owen McNulty, a New York Police Officer, is committed to helping those less fortunate
and strives to "clean up" New York from crime,
but Grace has a hard time believing he is genuine.
Owen is quite taken with Grace,
but is somewhat confused by her cold and disinterested attitude towards him.
As he continues to be there for Grace during her struggles
she begins to wonder if Owen is truly different from the other selfish policemen
that she's had to deal with all of her life.
As Grace lives each day she must learn to place her faith and trust in unlikely sources
to learn the true meaning of courage and forgiveness.
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My Thoughts:
I had such high hopes for this book - the cover alone caught my attention
and then when I read the back cover I thought for sure this would be a great read.
Unfortunately, by the time I got to the middle of the book all I could think of was
"Will I ever finish this?"
The first part of the book seem to move at a good pace telling the story of Grace
and sharing her pain and heartaches from working in a poor house
and having to deal with dishonest cops.
Then when she gets to New York we find that most of the policemen there
are just as crooked as they were in Ireland which gives Grace a low-view of men in general.
She meets Owen McNulty, the honest Police Officer, and has a hard time letting her guard down with him, but when he is always there for her when she is in trouble
it seems like maybe some romance will ignite,
but then throughout the book they begin to have less and less contact with each other
so that by the time they do realize their feelings for each other it seems a little forced.
Grace is offered a position with a family, the Parker's, that has many "issues"
from the mother not feeling like a mother and giving her children no love or interest
to the father wanting his family to not be failures and not show emotion.
Grace comes alongside this family as a nanny
and begins to discover herself; she begins to see that she can be strong when she is scared.
On to the gangsters called "The Dusters"...
For me, they were not quite believable.
The characters just didn't quite add up to what a gangster would have been like back then.
All in all, I would give this book 3.5 stars out of 5.
For me, the story fell flat.
** I was given a free copy of this book from Tyndale Publishers for an honest review.
All thoughts are my own. No other compensation was received. **