Review: Waking Up Joy by Tina Ann Forkner

Title: Waking Up Joy
Author: Tina Ann Forkner
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Publish Date: October 8, 2014
Source: Book Sparks

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Behind every lost dream lies a second chance…

When adored town spinster Joy Talley ends up in a coma after a peculiar accident, she is surprised and incensed to hear what is being said in her hospital room, including plans for her funeral. When she finally wakes, her well-meaning, but bossy, brothers and sisters dismiss her claims, thinking her accident has knocked her off her rocker, but Joy has never felt better, and is determined to set the past right.
Now Joy must face her darkest secret and risk reopening wounds caused by an old flame who rejected her more than twenty years ago. But taking risks brings change, as well as a new, younger man into Joy’s life, making her feel like a teenager again. Suddenly Joy’s once humdrum life is anything but boring and routine and the future beckons, exhilarating and bright."

My Two Cents:

"Waking Up Joy" is the story of Joy, a never married woman who finds herself in a bit of a predicament at the beginning of this book.  After freak accident, she finds herself in a coma. Although the rest of the world thinks that she can't hear them including her big, comedic family, she can most definitely hear them and all of their different thoughts about what happened and what she meant to them.

At the beginning of the book, we know that Joy has a difficult past that she has been struggling with. The author gives us details little by little, which at times I found very frustrating because it was hard to get emotionally involved with the character without really knowing what was going on with her until towards the end of the book. We get to see you Joy as she wakes up and is determined to make the past right. It was really interesting to me to see how did Joy goes about doing this. In a way, it was interesting that such an event had affected her so much even though she was far removed from when it actually happened.

The writing of the book was okay. Joy's family was a lot of fun to read about. She comes from a huge family filled with a lot of different characters. We definitely got to know Joy the best out of all of her siblings; however, we also get to know one of her nieces pretty well too, which added to the story. Overall, I thought this book was interesting. If you like family stories and don't mind not knowing a lot of details in the beginning, this book might be a good pick for you.