Winter Signs by Sarah Gai

Title: Winter Signs

Author: Sarah Gai

Genre: Romance

Opens:

There’s always that belief in life, even from a young age, that as you grow up you will always have a “forever” friend. Whether it’s someone from school or the kid down the street, somehow, someway, you will remain by one another’s side and take on the world together. Nothing, nor no one, can break the bond you have; throughout life you will always remain close—forever and ever.

Blurb: Winter Harris had everything she ever thought she needed – a soulmate, a best friend, and the one person in this entire world who made life worth living. He was her everything – until he was ripped from her life.

Nolan Reed never thought he would lose his heart the first day at his new school, but he had no choice the moment he laid eyes on Winter Harris. The only problem was, she wasn’t his to love.

When a tragedy occurs, lives are changed in ways they can never come back from. Will the years gone by be enough to fix the shattered pieces of Winter’s heart? Can Nolan ever be enough to help heal it?

My thoughts: WINTER SIGNS by Sarah Gai is the second book in the ‘Season Names’ series. We first meet Winter at the age of seven when she meets her brother’s best friend Connor, this is when he learns she is deaf, and this is when their perfect love starts. Winter may have been deaf but she was certainly not helpless. Connor learned sign language so he could communicate with her and they went from being ‘insta’ friends to being an inseparable couple and planning their future together by the end of High School. Winter’s father dies just before she goes to High School and this hits her for six, especially as her mother starts to reject Winter. All she has left for support is Connor, and her brother Charlie.

Then Nolan arrives in town he is instantly attracted to Winter, but when he learns she is Connor’s he makes no move towards her. Interestingly, although her heart and soul belongs to Connor, Winter is not indifferent to Nolan and she has feelings for him which puzzle her. When Winter loses Connor she is inconsolable; her sorrow is so overwhelming that she feels that she had nothing to live for and retreats within herself. With no support from her mother, Winter decides that the only way she will be able to get out of the dark hole she is in was to go away from everyone she knew and start over. She leaves town and moves in with her aunt and eventually learns to live again. A few years later, at Christmas, her brother gets engaged and asks her to return for the wedding and me the Maid of Honour. Nolan is the best man, he is still single, and still attracted to Winter hoping that time has healed the wounds that she carries.

I have had dealings with deaf children in only a periphery way – part of my English studies at University was to design and present a picture book for deaf children. It is so hard to comprehend how not being able to hear affects the lives of the deaf. At the school it was jaw-dropping to see these kids signing away to each other as a group. They taught me how to sign a few swear words too! But at school with a deaf unit they are among their peers – when they leave school and go out into the world and are a sole deaf person in a group and people around them talk so fast that they cannot read their lips – then they become isolated and frustrated. This happened to Winter on more than one occasion when people forgot in the excitement of the conversation.

SIGNS OF WINTER was full with emotion – loss of loved ones. rejection and mental abuse from a parent, sadness and sorrow. But is in no way a depressing story because after a loss comes recovery. After the tears Winter healed, and learned to move on with living and to reach out for happiness. And her friends are all there to help her. The story is beautifully written and had me hooked from the very first page.

Rating:

Great – I really enjoyed reading it and it is a book I will be recommending to all my friends who like this genre.

I wish to thank the author Sarah Gai for my copy to read and review.

Advertisement