Reviewed by PJ Ausdenmore
Grand Central Publishing
4 Stars

Jillian Samuels is a tough, big city deputy district attorney who seems destined to live her life alone.  Her three best friends all wished on a supposedly magic wedding veil and are now happily married to the loves of their lives but life has never given Jillian a reason to believe in magic or love.  She has no family, her last attempt at romance left her cruelly betrayed, she’s disillusioned with her high-powered career and when Blake Townsend, her long-time mentor and surrogate father figure, dies suddenly she’s left emotionally devastated and completely devoid of hope.  She does the one thing she swore she would never do.  She places the magic wedding veil on her head and makes a wish – a wish for a brand new life.  The very next day a stray dog appears at her door and it’s clear he intends to stay.  Then a call from Blake’s attorney brings the news that Blake has left her his Colorado lake cabin.  Finally, something occurs at the DA’s office that makes it impossible for Jillian to continue working there.  She may not believe in magic but that many signs are too hard to ignore so she quits her job, packs her belongings and, with the newly-named Mutt in tow, begins the journey to a new, and hopefully better, life in tiny Salvation, Colorado.

Tucker Manning had always lived a charmed life.  He grew up in a loving, supportive family, enjoyed a successful, highly lucrative career as an architect and fell in love with and married sweet and beautiful Aimee Townsend.  They called him the “Magic Man” but the magic ended the day his beloved wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer.   Leaving his career behind, Tuck brought Aimee home to spend her final days at her family’s lake cabin in small Salvation, Colorado – the place where Aimee had once hoped to begin and raise a family.  That was two years ago but Tuck is still mired in grief, living alone in the small cabin that his late wife’s estranged father had deeded to him four months earlier, working as a carpenter and uninterested in moving forward with his life.  The magic is gone and Tuck knows it will never return but a brush with disaster finally convinces him that it is time to move ahead and he plans to begin by restoring the broken down cabin that Aimee had loved.

The direction of the storyline at this point is pretty predictable and I’m sure you’ve already guessed that the cabin Jillian inherited from Blake and the cabin Blake supposedly deeded to Tuck are one and the same.  Sparks fly between Tuck and Jillian from their first meeting and battle lines are drawn as neither one intends to give up their rights to the cabin without a fight.  For Jillian, the cabin represents the new beginning she desperately needs while for Tuck, it’s his last tie to Aimee and the love that they shared.  Wilde could have used the situation to write a light, humorous and entertaining book without much depth but what she created instead is a complex, at times humorous, at times emotionally challenging, deeply satisfying love story.  It’s the journey of two lost souls who have given up their dreams of happiness only to discover that life, and some well-meaning meddlers, have other plans for them.  While Jillian has many lessons to learn along the way, it’s Tuck’s difficult journey that touched me most deeply, perhaps because I have been through the grief and rebirth that follows the death of a spouse.  Wilde guides him with compassion, emotional intensity and heart-wrenching accuracy as he struggles to move beyond his grief amidst the guilt and sense of betrayal caused by his sexual attraction and deepening emotional attachment to Jillian.   Richly drawn secondary characters, especially Tuck’s sister and brother-in-law and a dog that at times seems more human than canine, only added to my enjoyment of the book.

I encourage you to discover the magic of Lori Wilde’s All of Me.