Dear Fellow Reader,

My first book club book of the year! I have even finished it before the meeting! Woot!

It All Comes Back to You by Beth Dukes combines the stories of Ronni Johnson, a current-day nurse who works at a senior residence and the story of her recently deceased patient, Violet. Violet was wealthy and has left some of her money to Ronnie with the proviso that she will receive most of the money IF she completes a book about Violet’s life in a year.

While Ronnie has wanted to write, she has never written much and certainly not a book. She isn’t really sure she can do it. And she isn’t sure how she will do it and work full time. But Violet’s story is appealing to her and she decides that she has to try.

Violet appears to have led a life of a southern belle. She was the homecoming queen and had men always fawning over her. Was her life really as easy and wonderful as it seems?

The chapters in the book rotate between Ronni’s current story and Violet’s history. The two characters are so different that there isn’t a problem following which character is speaking in the chapter.

When I read the description of the book on Amazon, I was not excited about the book. Once again, those descriptions can be deceiving. While Violet had her bad points, she was a more sympathetic character than I thought from the description. Both main characters have flaws and there are times that you just want to be able to grab them and tell them not to make the mistake you see coming. I think that is a good thing. If the author can get you to care that much about the characters, she has done a good job.

My one irritation with the book? The title. I know that is odd but when I can not remember the title of the book I am reading then I think that the author didn’t do a great job with the title. There is a kind of subtitle – “I’m gone and the world can know everything…” which does fit with the Violet character but I’m not sure about It All Comes Back to You. This is a pretty minor complaint about the book, but I do find it irritating when I can’t remember the name of the book and I like the book. (NOTE:  We discussed this in my book club and figured out how the title could apply to one of the characters. That did help.)

I enjoyed the story and there were a few twists and turns to keep your attention. Some of them were better than others but I thought that Violet’s life was full of twists that you would not expect.

Thanks for reading!