Hannah Ferris has much to be happy about – she has a wonderfully understanding and adoring husband, Simon, who also happens to be very rich; a beautiful and talented daughter, Jennifer; a gorgeous house; and a great career. Then why can’t she ever be fully happy and contented? She has never been one to obsess about her looks and age, so why do her birthdays distress her so? Sure, she has never gotten along with her tyrannical minister of a father with his unforgiving attitude and biblical tirades, or with her ever-disapproving mother-in-law. But there is a deep, dark secret in her past which has haunted her and made her unhappy for quite some time which she’s never been able to reveal to her family.
After he lost his adopted parents, David became just one of the countless children in the system, passed from one foster home to another, unwanted and lonely. But a grown David is smart and determined to find who his birth mother is -- and why she had not wanted him enough to keep him. These burning questions lead him to L.A. and to the Ferris mansion at Bel Air. One day, Hannah looks up into the strangely familiar eyes of a young man and realizes that her luck has run out – she can’t run from the past anymore. Will she have the courage to reveal her past? How will she and her family cope with this upheaval?
In Family Album, Patricia Kay presents a story with strong emotional aspects. Troubling issues such as teenage pregnancy, adoption, foster homes, parent-child conflict, infatuation and more have been incorporated in the story, and their consequences, both bitter and sweet, told simply yet poignantly. The plot is nothing unique, but Kay handles it deftly and makes it humane. Hannah’s character evokes sympathy; Simon for the first half of the book appears too good to be true, but later he shows how human he truly is. David, too, is filled with rage and anger initially, but it kind of fizzles near the end. With this kind of storyline the author could have taken some more time and effort to further flesh out the characters, expanded the crucial confrontations and made the ending less abrupt.
Note: Patricia Kay also writes under the pseudonyms Ann Patrick and Trisha Alexander. She is the USA Today best-selling author of twenty-eight contemporary romance novels for Silhouette, Zebra, and Berkley publishing companies. Today Patricia lives in Houston, Texas, and many of her stories are based in the Gulf Coast city. You can visit her online at
www.patriciakay.com.