When Joe, an all American teenager with a high testosterone
level, met Kara, a heart stopping beauty with gold sparkles in her big brown
eyes, the earth spun backwards for a moment, time stood still, and a biological
imprint of pheromones cemented each other into their young minds. At least that’s the way Joe felt. So began the story of The Journal: Messages to Kara, by Blake Matthew James.
Cute, adorable, lovely – are three words to describe this
book. Joe and Kara had their fling
during their wonder-years of adolescent puppy love, and for their own reasons
parted and went their separate ways in life. The story is told by Joe, now almost 40, when he is beleaguered by his
buddies to try Facebook; to join the social networking world and maybe find out
what his old high-school girlfriend, Kara, is up to. It seems that each and every day, for the
last 17 years, Joe has written a journal, a diary so to speak, of his evolving
feelings about his loss over Kara; whom he believed to be his one and only soul
mate. Not knowing what Kara is doing,
where she is living, if she’s married or single, has been an all encompassing
dilemma for Joe, a perplexing omnipresent state-of-mind, and he needed to find
out. With a truly entertaining literary
technique, Blake Matthew James tells his story from the present time of when
Joe is starting his search for Kara to throughout receiving his email replies
from her. The book’s timeline oscillates
from the mature posturing of Joe with his romantic desire to be forthcoming, to
flashbacks of his memories of the many incidents of romance he and Kara had experienced. It’s this wonderful back-and-fourth, from the
present to the past, which constitutes the pace of the story, totally engulfing
the reader into these preciously wonderful emotions and feelings.
At one point in the book, as Joe begins to write his
journal, an interesting excerpt is: The
moment my pen touched the paper, the words flowed effortlessly. I didn’t even have to think about it…I
thought about the idea of a random stranger knowing my story, reading the words
that had formed in my heart, my soul, about the woman who had, whether she knew
it or not, been the major contributor to who I was today. The point made by the author is someone
doesn’t need to be with you to be an influence to your decisions in life. Whether a love lost, or the death of a
spouse, sibling, friend or parent, not being with someone is not a reason for
not being a part of someone.
This book is ever so original and intriguing as the romance
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had in Sleepless
in Seattle. Blake Matthew James
truly brings the element of our society’s changing morals; those of having the
Internet become a respectable tool for reaching out to people known from one’s
past, and ties the chivalry of Joe’s integrity into focus as to how he will
solve his problem – without looking desperate or lonely. The book moves swiftly, and honestly I could
not put it down, reading it in one sitting. Just when I thought I had the ending figured out….Bingo, a monkey wrench
is thrown into the machinery. What will
Joe do to handle his need for Kara? Will
Kara and Joe become re-united? If you
think you can guess the answer, here’s a hint: This book is ideally set up for a sequel!
