The James Logan Courier

By Olivia Guitron, Courier Staff Writer

Comfort & Joy is a story that will blow you away. This novel proves that magic can still happen even if you believe you’re too old for it. It’s a story of a woman named Joy who is having a rough time with her life. She’s a high school librarian and enjoys her job. However, she recently found out that her husband was cheating on her with her own sister. Joy can’t wait for Christmas vacation, when she feels like she can have some time to unwind, just not with her family.

She buys a ticket spontaneously because she feels like she needs a break, but has nowhere in particular to go to. Things turn out for the worse, however, when her plane crashes and she suffers a near-fatal accident. She has a vision of her dead mother, and wakes up, only to walk away from her own accident scene. She walks for hours on a deserted road with only trees to guide her. She finally comes upon a lovely hotel called the “Comfort Lodge”. She lives with a widower and his young son for some time, and realizes what it’s like to have a loving family to take care of and be in the company of as well.
There is a bizarre and heart-clenching climax, which in turn leads to the thought inducing conclusion. Readers would have never expected this turn of events in the story, and much less the beautiful and thoughtful ending. This book is truly unique and worth reading. It’s a type of story that when really put to thought, has many turn of events and things that were not realized until the very end.

I read this book through a really good friend of mine who recommended it, and thought I’d like to read it. If I hadn’t read it, I probably wouldn’t think so much about what could really happen if someone was in an accident, and all that. I definitely recommend this book for many reasons, one of them being that Christmas is coming up and we all need a little faith and magic in our lives. Also it’s simply a good read and shouldn’t be overlooked.