When You Dance with the Devil--Book Review

Imagine you're a kid walking into a candy shop for the first time in your life, your walking down the aisles and your eyes grow huge just looking at all the different varieties of gum robbing, cavity inducing flavors and colors of these sugary concoctions. Now imagine that your thirty years old, not five and the candy shop your walking into for the first time is actually the world around you and the candy in the jars with all the wonderful colors and flavors are actually men. Wouldn't you get a sugary high knowing that the men find you beautiful and wouldn't you also soon get cavities- or into serious trouble- if no one warned you against them, and you thought you could just eat them all up? Well, that's what happened to Jolene Tillman.

Jolene Tillman is alone in the world for the first time and is unsure of whom she is or how to act. Her mother has just died from a seven-year illness and Jolene is left with a warped view of the world around her courtesy of her mother's hatred of men and relationships. Needless to say she goes wild, which I can definitely relate to. After receiving some advice from her local pastor, Jolene travels to New England and settles into Thank the Lord Boarding House where an interesting cast of characters come to live and teach Jolene slowly but surely how life really is.

Jolene meets Judd who is retired and counsels everyone who lives at the boarding house into a new perspective on life. Richard has moved into the house a little after Jolene after retiring from the corporate world and just wants a quiet existence but soon learns the last quiet place is Thank The Lord Boarding House. And lastly is the house manager, Fannie Johnson who guides and disciplines with a loving hand, and who soon learns some surprising relavations herself. These are the main characters but certainly not all who we meet who inhabit Thank The Lord Boarding House and who teach us that the old reprimand, Treat others like you would like to be treated.

After some serious mishaps with men, and misadventures with a couple of the male members of Thank The Lord Boarding House, Jolene finally regains a sense of herself and who she wants to be.

When You Dance With The Devil is an interesting look into what happens when the person you grew up with is no longer there and you have to struggle all alone in a world full of cruel, meaningless people and misguided notions. When You Dance With The Devil is also a lesson in life and how people you meet shape you. When you are finished with this book, you come away with a sense of yourself and you will think twice before going into any relationship weather it is with a man or woman. Five stars.