Perfect Strangers

I read this book last year sometime and I enjoyed it immensely. Unlike all the other romances I have read (and I have read thousands), this one ws different. I think it may have been the absence of the usual hackneyed dialogue between the lovers. And what unconventional lovers! If you are a romance buff and crave something different this is definitely the way to go.

This book about a single woman wanting to have a baby strikes a chord in most women. The character Jack who enters her life is a very complicated man.Watching their relationship unfold is like a movie;you can't leave them until the end. I have loaned this book to no less than 5 friends and none put the book down until she was finished. I will continue to look for another copy. I hope this author will continue to write adult books along with her children's books.

I first read parts of Perfect Strangers in Good Housekeeping magazine. This is the only novel I have actively sought to buy after reading the magazine version. I was entranced by Ms. Gaeddert's characterizations and the story line. Natalie, a successful illustrator of children's books who feels her biological clock ticking away, wants a child. After pondering her options, she decides to pay someone to father the baby. Jack is bicyling through New England on a journey of grief and atonement. He gets permission to camp on Natalie's twenty acre farm. Natalie knows absolutely nothing about this taciturn man, except that he can play the flute beautifully, and that he tackles new challenges with silent determination. This book differed from others of the same genre (romantic fiction) because of the plausibility of the characters--they seemed like real people, and I cared about them. This is not a smarmy, formula romance. I thought it was utterly delightful. This is a book I will reread at least once a year, for sheer fun. That's why I was cruising the net to find any other books by this author.