Question C

[Jonetta]

Frank learns his son is deaf. What do you think of his shift in thinking about Brian and his first encounter with him after the confirmation?

[Phrynne]

That was a lovely scene! Frank has changed his whole attitude now, probably because he can start to hope for his son having a good future.

[Jonetta]

Lovely was the word that I thought of, too. Poor Frank had so many conflicting emotions, guilt being the primary one. To have hope for the first time must be overwhelming. Brought tears to my eyes.

[Robin]

Loved that scene. Can you imagine learning that everything you thought about your son was completely wrong? Frank now has a lot to look forward to.

[Charlene]

I agree with you all. This part was well written and emotional.

[Lauren]

I really enjoy the character development in this series. The meeting between Frank and Brian was so heartwrenching as Frank realized that his son loved him.

[Jonetta]

I love how she’s taking her time with them.

[Veronica]

That was a great, emotional scene. I think the author did a good job of laying out all of Frank's emotional turmoil since losing his wife and how it has affected his relationship with his son and with the world at large.

It also demonstrates how we can see only what we expect to see. Frank had been led to believe that his son was feeble-minded so everything he saw fed that perception. Then Sarah gave him a new piece of information and it changes everything. Sort of like looking at those 3D pictures and trying to see the 3D image. You look and look but don't see anything, then suddenly you tilt your head to view it from a different angle and...there it is and you wonder how you ever could've missed it.

Plus it was funny to see Mrs. Malloy jump in fright when Frank yelled to test Brian's hearing.

[Jonetta]

Very insightful, Veronica, and I believe on target. Everything fed into that narrative of him being feeble minded.

Anytime Mrs. Malloy gets rattled is a fun time:)

[~ Giulia ~]

The whole subplot about Frank and his son was my favourite part of the book. He went from not wanting to admit that his deafness changed anything, to slowly and carefully beginning to hope after talking with the doctors and the schools, to finally really looking at his son and seeing him for the very first time with all the emotional turmoil that went with it. I hope we see more of their interaction in the next books.

[Jonetta]

It really was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it? Like watching a budding flower slowly blossom.

[Christina T]

I've been struggling with my rating of this book because of this scene and the character development. I settled for 4 stars but have been debating on raising it to 4.5 because I love the direction she is going with the characters. Frank is starting to really burrow into me. I almost hated him and his opinions in the first book but I like how Thompson is slowly adapting him towards a good decent man. The scene where he picked up his son in probably forever had me melting.

[Jonetta]

It was sneaky how she created this scene to give us an entirely different insight into this complex man.