Love When You Least Expect It

Love When You Least Expect It

• Dec 19, 2012

Love Walked In & Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

Release Date: November 2006; April 2008

Publisher: Penguin; HarperCollins
Pages: 307 pages; 400 pages

Source & Format: Bought; Paperback

Sum It Up (from Amazon)

Love Walked In: When Martin Grace enters the hip Philadelphia coffee shop Cornelia Brown manages, her life changes forever. But little does she know that her newfound love is only the harbinger of greater changes to come. Meanwhile, across town, Clare Hobbs—eleven years old and abandoned by her erratic mother—goes looking for her lost father. She crosses paths with Cornelia while meeting with him at the café, and the two women form an improbable friendship that carries them through the unpredictable currents of love and life.

Belong to Me: Cornelia Brown surprised herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to move to the suburbs with her husband. Her mettle is quickly tested by her impeccably dressed, overly judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt—the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she'd find in suburbia. With Lake, another recent arrival, Cornelia shares a love of literature and old movies—as she forms an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman and her perceptive, brilliant young son Dev.

Thoughts on Love Walked In & Belong to Me

I read Love Walked In last year, and I actually included it on my list of favorite reads from 2011. After finishing it, I immediately went out and bought Belong to Me since I knew that it was a sort-of sequel. But I never quite got around to reading it.

When I was finally ready to pick it up, the first book wasn't as clear in my mind as I would have liked so I did a little re-read.

My favorite thing about Marisa de los Santos is her lyrical writing. She was a poet long before she was writing novels, and I think that's so evident in her books. The words just flow off the page, and there were so many things I wanted to underline and save to roll around in my mind later.

Love Walked In revolves around the unlikely relationship between its two narrators, Cornelia and Clare. Cornelia is a cafe manger in her thirties who meets Clare, the 11-year-old daughter of her boyfriend, one day in the cafe. What happens next is a sweet love story - between a grown woman and a lost and scared little girl.

I adored these two ladies, especially for the movie and literary references that are so intrinsic to their characters. They absolutely sold me on this book!

In Belong to Me, Cornelia has the urge to move to the suburbs with her husband (I won't share his name because it would spoil part of the first book). Once she's finally moved in, she struggles to make friends and adjust to her new way of life. From her judgmental neighbor to a possible friend with lots of secrets, Cornelia is about to learn that things aren't always what they seem.

You don't have to read the first book to understand the second, but I don't think you'll love the characters nearly enough without the history of the first book.

This is a quiet book that focuses on character development and gorgeous prose. If you're interested a book with lots of heart, this is certainly one you should check out!

So Quotable

"We talked and talked and talked. Maybe love comes in at the eyes, but not nearly as much as it comes in at the ears, at least in my experience. As we talked, lights flicked on inside my head; by the end of the night I was a planetarium."

"Certain people are like that, I guess. They're together no matter where they are. They just belong to each other."