Kristie J’s review of Signs of Attraction by Laura Brown
Contemporary Romance published by Avon Impulse 14 Jun 16

I really have been enjoying so many books lately that I’m looking for alternative superlatives other than ‘I really enjoyed this one’ or ‘I loved this book’ or ‘this book is really good.’ So this is my lead of sentence for this one:

This book is the BOMB!  I’m not quite sure how I found this one, I troll through so many different places now, AAR, GoodReads, Amazon, following up on what other readers with similar tastes have enjoyed and a lot of inexpensive books.  But I bow down to whoever or however I heard about this book.

I don’t often start this way but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the hero, Reed.  I have to say this first off, as he’s a special hero and a hero by every definition of the word.  Now onto the review.

Carli, our heroine, is very hearing impaired.  She has hearing aids, but they are sometimes more of a hindrance than a help.  The batteries die at the most inopportune times and she often experiences almost painful feedback if the sound isn’t adjusted just right.  She is having difficulty on her first day of a new class.  On top of the issues just mentioned, her professor has a mustache, which doesn’t help in hearing and he has an accent.  Adding all these together, Cali is feeling almost helpless.  She needs this course, but understanding anything is impossible.  That is until Reed shows up in class and comes to her rescue.  Reed is not hearing impaired, he is deaf.  He has a couple of interpreters’ helping him in this class.  He stays after class with her to help her.  He can’t hear and she has never learned ASL – American Sign Language, so they communicate through notes.  He offers her all kinds of ideas to help her in this class and with her hearing impairment in general.  He realizes that her life is so lonely, never having learned to sign and not hearing very well.  He also sees she suffers from debilitating headaches.  He takes her under his wing and introduces her to a world she never knew.  He’s a teacher of the deaf himself, Cali is in school to be a teacher.  He brings her into his own world and, although Cali doesn’t sign, he convinces her to start learning.

He is very attracted to her but takes things very slow in building a romantic relationship, first because that’s just the kind of guy he is and also because he was badly burned in the past.

Signs of Attraction is just all kinds of wonderful, starting with Reed.  He’s thoughtful, patient, kind, romantic, caring, very sexy – he’s just, well, all kinds of wonderful and in my top hero list now.  Cali is an equally well-developed character.  She has horrific family dynamics.  Her father is abusive and refuses to acknowledge that Cali really has hearing issues.  He just calls her lazy and inattentive and makes her feel terrible about herself in general.  Her mother is living in the world of denial and her sisters seem to have left her out of their lives due to her inability to hear much.  There is a good deal why she has had no support network until she meets Reed.  Her world is rocked after a sickening incident occurs that exposes ugly family secrets and sends Cali into a deadly spiral that not even Reed may be able to pull her out of.

I found this book very moving and emotional and real.  At the end of the book the author, Laura Brown, gives us some of her life experiences and why the book is so believable.  She is hard of hearing herself and has really invested much of herself into this story.  This makes it even more ‘real’ for me.

I watched Dancing with the Stars this past season, a show I don’t normally watch.  One of the contestants was completely deaf, and week after week, I, as well as the judges and I’m sure millions of others, watched in awed amazement as his talent and determination wowed the audience.  The fact that he couldn’t hear a single note of music was no hindrance for him at all.  Instead, we witnessed something truly special as his joy and love of dance shone through.  One of the reasons he went on the show was to show the rest of the world that deafness is no barrier.  He won the season, and well deservedly so.  He ‘schooled’ us all in a wonderful way.  As I watched he and his partner dance to a newer version of Sounds of Silence, I held my breath and was in tears at the end, knowing I had witnessed something rare and magical.  I could tell by the fact I barely breathed and had goosebumps all over.

Told from alternating first person points of view, I know this is a book I’m going to be rereading often, it’s that good.  In fact, even though I just read it on the weekend, doing this review makes me want to read it again tonight.  That doesn’t happen very often.

Grade: A+

Summary:

Do you know what hearing loss sounds like? I do.

All my life I’ve tried to be like you. I’ve failed.

So I keep it hidden.

But on the day my world crashed down around me, Reed was there.

He showed me just how loud and vibrant silence can be, even when I struggled to understand.

He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever known. His soulful eyes and strong hands pulled me in before I knew what was happening.

And as I saw those hands sign, felt them sparking on me, I knew: imperfect could be perfect.

Reed makes me feel things I’ve never felt. It’s exciting…and terrifying.

Because he sees me like no one else has, and I’m afraid of what he’ll find if he looks too closely.

The only thing that scares me more than being with him? Letting him go.

Read an excerpt.