Book Tour -- Tangerine

I'll admit that I didn't expect to like Tangerine I'm not keen, generally speaking, on reading Book Three of a series when I haven't read the others. It didn't take me long to fall under the spell of Marilynn Griffiths' writing and to immerse myself into the story of Jean Guerra.


Tangerine is the third novel in a series called Shades of Style. (As near as I can figure, there will be one more.) The first two are entitled Pink and Jade, and being as I haven't read them, I can't tell you the significance of the colors to the contents of the novels. But from reading Tangerine I'd guess that the colors/ titles are relevant.

I expected a chick lit type of novel, maybe because of the blurb on Griffith's website. It isn't. It is the story of a fifty-ish woman whose husband had been imprisoned years before for a crime he hadn't committed. Even though she loved him still, she felt she had to choose between him and raising their daughter--and she chose the daughter although she never divorced the husband.



When Nigel reappears in her life as though by accident (with conviction over-ruled), fashion designer Jean isn't ready for her life to be overturned. Nigel has been loaned to her company to work with her on a design of menswear for Reebok. Their teenage granddaughter, Elena, finds out that her unknown grandfather is in town and sets out to do her part to reunite them. To Jean's dismay, so do her friends and colleagues at the design firm.

Mixed into this tangled tale of reborn mature love is a strong sense of God's peace and strength. Far from preachy, I found the spiritual side to this novel to be relevant to the story. I'd definitely be willing to read other novels by Marilynn Griffith.