Book Review: “Love Walked In”

Marisa de los Santos

A truly heart-warming and beautiful story, “Love Walked In” is written so delicately and simply that you will not want to put this novel down. It’s a perfect rainy day read because you won’t want to put it down until you are finished. Marisa De Los Santos will capture your heart with her delicate and simple words, which describe love in such an alluring way.

The novel tells the tale of Cornelia Brown, a twenty-something year old who manages a coffee shop in Philadelphia. When a man named Martin Grace, who looks astonishingly like Cary Grant, walks in, he changes her life forever. Typically, you would expect that they fall in love and live happily ever after. However, Martin is merely a connecting character to someone else that Cornelia meets.

His eleven year-old daughter, Clare, whose life he has not been involved with, suddenly comes back into the picture. Although Cornelia realizes she is more in love with the idea of Martin rather than the person he is, she also sees that the love she has developed for his daughter is one that is unexplainable. Clare’s mother is struggling with emotional problems and has, therefore, abandoned her daughter, so Cornelia is left to love, comfort, and play the role of mother to her.

As the plot develops, we are introduced to more characters from Cornelia’s past, such as her family and her childhood friend and brother-in-law Teo. Relationships develop, strengthen, and grow in ways that were unforeseen to Cornelia. All of this has happened because a man by the name of Martin Grace walked into her coffee shop a few months prior.

An incredibly touching story about finding your hearts desire and never letting it go. We learn that, sometimes, love comes in forms we would have never expected. Santos’s use of comparisons to classic films gives the novel a nostalgic and romantic feeling that is so easy to relate to. Definitely a “chic-lit,” but if you adore a good love story that will make you both laugh and cry, then this is it! The best part is that there is a follow up book to this novel called “Belong to Me”. Read next week’s issue for a review on that.