If you’re looking for a love story, then look no further than Seasons by Mario Saincic. I’ve never been the sort to shy away from romance– when I was a kid I used to love reading the Harlequin novels my grandma had hidden away in old dusty boxes and I never quite grew out of that. There’s nothing that warms me and moves me faster than love, and it doesn’t always have to be romantic, but. I mean– who doesn’t enjoy the warm fuzzies that come with a really grand and sweeping love story?
Seasons is just exactly that kind of story. We meet a woman who’s tired of her life in Texas and the feeling of being trapped who has finally gotten brave enough to leave for a while to go find herself– and then a man who had managed to do to the same with his wife, just before his life fell apart. Jess and Graeme butt heads immediately, but you know what they say: there’s a fine line between love and hate. These two don’t even hate each other, they just don’t get along at all, but in that tension burns a passion just waiting to recognize its potential and rise to the surface.
One of the things I really loved about Seasons is that the characters deal with very real issues in their lives. More than once I grew frustrated with a character, but in retrospect, I think that’s one of the cool parts of the novel– I was frustrated like Jess was frustrated, or like Graeme was. Life doesn’t always come in a neat little package, no matter how much we want it to. Life is messy when it’s just one person, so add someone else to the mix and you’re kind of looking for a gnarly entanglement. Mario Saincic doesn’t shy away from the hard parts, and I think that’s great.
You can tell, too, that as an author, Saincic is a romantic. There’s always something that falls flat when a writer doesn’t believe in the story he’s telling, but Seasons never suffered from anything like that because you can just feel Mario’s passion and interest in these characters and their story. Overall, I found Seasons to be a satisfying, frustrating (in the best way), captivating tale of love and its fight to overcome odds. There were a few proofreading issues that I noted, but nothing overwhelming or too terribly distracting. If you’re looking for a book that’s going to give you all kinds of mushy feelings, well– look no further.