Review of Hometown Heartache by MJ Schiller

Nash is trying to make a name for himself in the art world…  But when he meets a realtor to buy a gallery, he is stunned to find Chloe sitting at the table with the man. He has never stopped thinking about her since she disappeared from his life without a trace. Is it too late to win back her love? 

Chloe has finally found a way to leave her past behind her… But her heart leaps out of her chest when she sees Nash. How can he be here? Now…after all this time? On the surface, she pulls herself back together. But underneath she feels she is about to shatter. After remaking herself, how can she deal with being faced with Nash and the life she knew before? 
If this chance meeting doesn’t rip Chloe and Nash apart, he will. 

Little do they know, someone has been lurking in the shadows, manipulating them all along. If he has his way, the two will never be reunited. Even if he has to take one of them out to ensure it.

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I was born in Overland Park, KS, grew up in St. Louis, MO, went to school at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and moved to Bloomington, IL fresh out of college. I worked as a high school/junior college teacher, personnel recruiter, office manager of a jewelry store, and, for the past ten years plus, as a lunch lady. I like to karaoke and attend rock concerts. I'm also actively involved at church and spend too much time on Facebook. I am the mother of a twenty-year-old and eighteen-year-old triplets, and have been married to my husband, Don, for over twenty-five years.

I have been a writer all my life. My first book, which was co-written with Mary Ellen Murphey in second grade, was titled "The Black Cat," and was written on blue hotel stationary, hole-punched, and bound by white yarn. I believe it is currently out of circulation. 

When I turned forty, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized those bigwig publishing houses in New York were now probably run by people younger than me, so I shouldn't be intimidated by them. At about the same time, I was watching one of those award shows, and Jaclyn Smith got up to give a post-humorous award to Aaron Spelling. She credited him for encouraging her to go into acting, saying something brilliant like, "Reach for your dreams." Nothing new. Almost even seems a little Jiminy Cricketish. But, for some reason, it struck me that night. When Aaron Spelling was thirteen, he was probably just like any other acned thirteen-year-old. But he worked to achieve his dreams, and became a household name. So, I began to write. Once I finished my first book,I wasn't able to stop. I would rather write than do just about anything else. After all, I get to make people (characters) do what I want, and design their happy endings. What power! And what a privilege.

                       STOP BY ON THURSDAY FOR
          MJ'S INTERVIEW AND RAFFLECOPTER!

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 M.J. Schiller writes a series about rock stars and celebrities, so I was a little surprised when I encountered this line, called the Real Romance Collection.  Each novel, and I believe there are currently at least 5, is a stand-alone romance story about “real” people with “real” problems, as opposed to a romance involving celebrities or main characters with glamorous lifestyles. While the Bling-Bling books are fun, sometimes you just want to sink your senses into a nitty-gritty survivor, against-all-odds kinda tale. HOMETOWN HEARTACHE is just such a story.

In HOMETOWN HEARTACHE, Schiller has addressed some unfortunately all too common and sometimes uncomfortable social issues. The book’s blurb gives no indication of the early flashback to the H/H’s hometown connection, though it’s there that the story truly begins, where the girl/boy next door characters grow up with lives, families, heartaches and problems intertwined--where they fall in love and out of touch with one another.  It’s there that the foundation of their adult lives are laid, and it’s the brutal events that played out there that result in the present-day circumstances the two find themselves in once the story settles in to the current events.

Chloe didn’t have a hard life as a child. A hard life would be having lost her father, having a dying mother and a mean stepfather. But Chloe didn’t have a hard childhood. She had a brutal childhood, and it turned her into a beautiful but cold young woman who sometimes makes cold, calculated choices based upon the shattered innocence of her youth and a heart she froze to protect it after the boy she loved went away and never, ever came back such a long time ago.

Nash is part of the happy family of boys who live next door and try to protect the little girl whenever they can. Their mom has social services on speed dial, for all the good it does them.  But one day Nash has to grow up and has to go away to school. He can’t get ahold of her, can’t seem to contact her any way at all, and when he comes home, Chloe is gone. He can’t find her, and even if he could, would she forgive him for leaving her to pursue his dreams?

Schiller has put together a tense and dramatic love story that addresses some modern issues. It is about real people and more importantly it’s about real issues. It’s about Chick-Lit issues, but is not graphic or intense in an uncomfortable visual or descriptive way, but more obviously addresses in a sincere and HEA way the healing power of love and forgiveness, of moving on and putting the past in the past for good. If you thought this was just another hometown romance, you may want to give it a second look. It's not just another romance novel. It’s about gritty, real-life drama and how to rise up from those who would do you dirty and keep you down. This book gives a whole new meaning to hero and heroine, modern-style.   

Book Bling gives this  5 STARS!