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Reviewed by Lorraine Cobcroft for Readers' Favorite
They met by chance in a park after Jason chased a butterfly. His mother had told him butterflies were messengers of angels, sent to give direction when something was missing from one's life. Chris was what was missing, it seems. Five years later, advertising executive Jason, and his writer wife, Chris, have what appears to be an ideal marriage and an ideal life. And then tragedy strikes. In Miracles Not Included, C.A. King explores the way we cope with - and hopefully eventually recover from - grief. Though fiction, it deals with a very real process that all of us have to endure at some point in our lives.
The story is relatively short and the plot is simple, but C.A. King uses analogies, imagery and motifs in creative ways. Her philosophies come through subtly; descriptions are vivid and original; characters are believable and likeable. We relate to them. We feel their pain. The later chapters describing tragedy and grief are much more poignant because in the early part of the story everything was so perfect. Miracles Not Included does, in fact, include miracles, but the miracles are of a kind that, thankfully, most of us experience when we begin to emerge from periods of anguish. The story ends as it began, with the characters enjoying a seemingly perfect life. And yet the memory of sorrow is never erased. We heal. We learn to live with grief, but we never forget. What C.A. King leaves us with, though, is not just a satisfyingly happy ending scene. It is a delightfully original and comforting perspective on life and its challenges. In Miracles Not Included, King leads us to believe in miracles.