What Matters Most: A Novel

I decided to give Luanne Rice another chance after I trashed her book Blue Moon. What Matters Most is incredible. I loved it and would recommend it to anyone! What a great story! Just keep the kleenex handy; you will need it. Great job!

This was my first Luanne Rice book and it won't be my last. I couldn't put it down and I read it in one day. Even though the ending was devastating, I loved every minute of it.

I discovered Luanne Rice only early this year, and SANDCASTLES was the first of her books that I read. I liked it so much that I started backtracking, reading all of her books. She has become one of my favorite writers, although there are some early books that I don't care for too much (ANGELS ALL OVER TOWN for one). However, WHAT MATTERS MOST is the Luanne Rice book I'll be talking about with everyone I know. The characters are delightful...as a Catholic with Irish roots, I felt a connection with the passion, loyalty, friendship, and love of these Irish characters. The intensity of their love for one another, the conflicting emotions of a nun whose femininity and human heart are revealed in ways many Catholics don't want to see or have been too indoctrinated in tradition to realize...powerful, emotional, heartrending stuff here. I couldn't put the book down, I could hardly see the last 30 or so pages through my tears, and I find myself dreaming of the characters as if they were real. As someone who grapples with the validity of certain mysticism in the Catholic tradition myself, I found that my mind was opened to the possibility of a faith that enormous and a heart that open. I am so impressed with Luanne Rice and WHAT MATTERS MOST that I plan to buy this book for all the women in my large, Irish Catholic family.

This book is Wonderful! It keeps you interested and intrigued right from the beginning. Luanne also brings back some of our favorite characters from a previous book I read. It is well worth getting!