R —RUBY IN THE SKY, written by Jeanne Zulick Feruolo; reviewed by Debi O’Neille.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The first third of the this book rose midway up the ladder to stardom, not boring nor exciting but somewhere in the middle. The next chunk had me more intrigued. The back story now created more questions, making me curious. I enjoyed the book a lot through here, yet I was pretty sure I knew the answers to the major questions. I read the last third of the book to see if I my guesses were right and to see how the author delivered the answers.

There were sad things mentioned in the early and mid-portions of the book, but nothing really created the kind of immediate sadness that wraps around you when you read, and makes you feel as though you’ve just been through a tremendous loss or hit by a truck. Still, this author put subtle grip-holds on me that I didn’t even realize until the last hundred pages. That’s when this story brought me to tears.

After the first time RUBY IN THE SKY had me crying, I didn’t expect tears again until the very end, if at all. Boy, did I get that wrong. Most of the last hundred pages had me in tears. (Prepare in advance for that; grab the tissues!) I didn’t cry just once or twice. I cried closer to six or seven times with one cry streaming into another.

I’m not saying that a book’s ability to trigger tears defines whether or not it’s a good read—no one can say that tears make a story all happy or all sad, because to put it in Ruby’s words, “Sometimes when people cry, it’s out of joy, not sadness, and there’s no way to know that until you know the whole story.”

And that quote sums up Ruby’s story.

Don’t skip this book. Even if you don’t think the beginning is grabbing you as much as you’d like, keep reading. The author is working her magic in building a case for this book, deep inside you, without you even knowing it. Trust me. Keep reading.

Happy and sad reading!