Whether we are born into the world as a blank page has been argued since the time of Aristotle. Is it nature or nurture that makes us who we are? Do we choose our own fate, or are we chosen for the roles we play? Serena Clay is a golden girl living in a soulful, turbulent time. Beautiful, intelligent, pragmatic, and so well cared for, one would think she’d be better prepared. But there’s no way, … there’s no way, she could’ve known how overwhelming and passionate it would be to fall in love, until she met Ethan Vance—a fierce, charming, and enigmatic young man.
Ethan Vance lives a life filled with secrets and lies. He longs to be free of them as well as of the violent family legacy they stem from. With careful planning and avoidance, he hopes to keep the woman he dares to love and the person most precious to him, in his life forever. When things go bad as they often do, Ethan has a choice to make but now his heart won’t be the only one on the line.
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Lily Java amazes me, first of all, as an author, because she’s done something spectacular in writing a duet of more than six hundred pages! Secondly, this first story, Ethan’s Choice, itself is a tour de force. Java writes about Ethan and Serena, their meeting, their falling in love, and the baggage they each bring into a relationship juxtaposed against a backdrop of the Bronx in the 1970’s and 1980’s . Her words draw the reader into the boroughs of NYC as if you lived and breathed in the “city that never sleeps.”
As you get to know Ethan and Serena, you also meet everyone else who played a part in their lives, particularly Ethan’s as Java expertly peeled back layer after layer of the nuances that made Ethan the man he was and what ultimately led him to make the choice he made. I confess, I read Ethan’s choice with a bit of low-key jealousy, because I kept thinking how I want to be as adept with stringing together my words and phrases as Ms. Java is. One particular scene that I practically salivated over was the one where there’s a deliberate POV shift involving Ian, the red-head and his run-in with an avenging angel, if you will. That was brilliant!
I found Ethan’s Choice to be rich in description that doesn’t succumb to purple prose, which paints a vivid picture of the story of Ethan’s turbulent life and Serena’s seemingly charmed one. The fraught relationship that Ethan has with both his father and his uncle make for a riveting read, placing the reader right in the middle of the actions that made Ethan the man he became, despite resisting his arrival there literally “kicking against the pricks.”
If you want to read a story that goes so much further than the surface of a relationship, one that carries you all the way back to its origins, that will have you rooting harder for these fictitious characters than you’ve ever done in your life, you must read, Ethan’s Choice.
My actual rating 4.5 Stars!
First things first—Lily Java can write her ass off. I literally stopped at one point in this story and said that aloud because I was just overwhelmed with how beautiful her words were. Her prose is lyrical and gorgeous.
In Ethan’s Choice, we meet Ethan and his complicated family, and watch him fall in love with Serena Clay. We see how his family relationships impact his newfound life with his love, and the choices he makes as a friend, son, lover, and a man.
But it isn’t just the plot here that’s intriguing– it’s the vivid, vibrant pictures Lily paints, which are alive, and electric, warm and moody, and add subtle depth to the story. I not only felt the energy of the time period captured in this story, but I felt and knew these characters, even when I didn’t agree with their choices.
This is a rich, emotionally complex story that drew me in from the start, and serves to further affirm Lily Java’s immense talent.