Violette Between, by Alison Strobel Morrow

Violette and Christian are survivors of their lost spouses; trying to build a future together in spite of their painful memories. Drawn together after their respective grieving periods, they've forged a tenuous bond, taking tentative steps forward in new, awkward love, as well as getting to know the God they'd previously blamed for taking their loved ones from them.

Violette - a free-spirited painter - struggles with losing her husband Saul to a sudden heart attack, and even though she's found new love with Christian, a relationship psychologist who's also recovering from losing his wife Cynthia to cancer, she finds it hard to let go of the past.

Despite lingering doubts about Viollete's love for him, Christian is happy; his practice is thriving, he and Viollete are at least enjoying each other, and both of them are growing in their relationship with God. Inside, he still questions her true feelings, wondering how much she still hangs onto Saul, but for the moment, life is good.

Tragedy comes with Violette's fall while painting a mural, leaving her unresponsive and in a coma. While she wanders a ghostly hall in her mind, forced to watch moments from her past with Saul, Christian is once again faced with losing a loved one, and he desperately searches God's will for peace of mind, while paradoxically blaming Him for threatening his love once again.

Violette Between, by Allison Strobel Morrow, admirably tries to take us to a place few Christian novels dare meddle with - the interior halls of the mind, as Viollete works through her past anguish at losing Saul, reconciling her love for him and the growing love she feels for Christian. Though not about a trip through the afterlife, Between invokes thoughts of What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr.

The goal is ambitious, and though well written in spots, Violette's flashback sequences are somewhat awkward. The author is trying to paint a ghostly Violette observing the past Violette, and while this might've been effective in a movie or television show, the POV (point of view) narrative is somewhat confusing. Better to either make Violette re-experience all these moments unknowingly, with a flutter of déjà vu here and there, or provide a guide for her, ala Cuba Gooding in What Dreams May Come.

The book does touch on some tender moments, and kudos to Morrow for not "moralizing" the experience of grieving spouses - there's no "spiritual band-aid" here; Viollete and Christian struggle with God, they wrestle, they feel pain and question their faith, as well as themselves.

Given some of the heart-warming moments of sentimentality, I really wanted to give this book a '4'; I was leaning that way most of the story. The main problem, though, is the entire narrative consists of flashbacks; Violette's flashbacks of Saul, and Christian's flashbacks of meeting Viollete. There came a moment in the book, for me, when I suddenly realized there had been no forward progression, and Violette was still in her coma, Christian still by her bedside.

Other than that, it's a good, emotionally moving tale about two very different people making a relationship work - both Viollete and Saul, and then Violette and Christian. It also grapples with the important question of how to move on from a passed spouse to love again, without dishonoring their memory.