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The Scrapbook
Every picture tells a story...
Anyone looking at the photographs in Celia's scrapbook would see a portrait of a wonderful marriage, from Celia and Mack Butler's beautiful white wedding - the beginning of her life as a Navy wife - to her growing, smiling family.
But Celia's life is not so easily summed up in photographs. The value of these moments frozen in time is the stories behind them. From the sweetness of a child's birth, or the excitement surrounding a much-belated honeymoon - to the crisis that almost tears her family apart.
From the love that began, almost by chance, all those years ago...
- GenresMilitary Fiction
288 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2007
4 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 13, 2018
I think Boogie is expecting an epic rant from me here. I shall not disappoint!
However, for once, I did not want to murder the hero as per her expectation.
Shake him a couple of time?
that mayyyyyy have crossed my mind a couple of time.
A couple of head slaps?
Definitely!
But I didn't hate him.
May be because I have people in service in family? And I know how hard it is for the man as well.
It is REALLY easy to just look at the family and say but they are being uprooted and missing out on life. But not many stop to think how hard it is for the man as well. What toll it takes on them for the missed birth of the firstborn, the endless deployment, missing the dance recital of his baby girl.
Now our hero was a failure. Hands down. Not because he was bad husband, or a bad father. But because he had admitted defeat even before starting and from that point forward he started using that as an excuse to hide from his responsibilities and made his wife into a goddess.
She didn't deserve it. She was also an imperfect mortal. Who couldn't tell her son, that he's an asshole and a coward. She couldn't be stern with her kids because she felt she let them down by all the moves. That wasn't the really the right thing to do. Her job as a mother was to let them know that THEY are the kids, and they need to respect HER, not just their father.
She never told her husband that he was a coward, she didn't share ANY of her worries, she didn't share ANYTHING except his bed. She gave him a piece of her mind, but when? When everything fell apart, and when HE needed her support. That almost seemed petty. Seemed being the key word here.
Because it wasn't really. She didn't choose that precise moment. She just reached her limit.
However IF she talked to him throughout the years of marriage, the limit wouldn't have reached and he wouldn't have felt abandoned when he needed his family's support.
Boogie made a fair point, would he have listened?
He did at the end.
His ego, his career was important to him, but at no point of time was his woman any less important.
Because she let it slide, he just gotten worse. She was equally guilty in this whole thing as him.
It takes two to make a marriage, If he was absent, she was ignorant, thinking ignorance is bliss.
Was his promotion more important than anything else? Not really. I mean why was this even a question? The man worked all his life towards his goal. It was DAMN important. However, if his family had open communication, they'd have understood that and would've been able to work around it.
Now what i HATED, HATED about heroine.
Her jumping to wrong conclusions deliberately, either to start a fight, or to bottle it up.
When hero was talking about he was the ONLY one who made some sense. As heroine pointed out she had no clue what to do, and unlikely to come up with solution.
His solution was SPECIFICALLY towards that situation.
It was in NO WAY acceptable for heroine to take that as a reference to her pregnancy.
hero pointed out very logically. They were in love, they BOTH wanted to be married and they BOTH wanted the baby. Which wasn't the case here. I lost a LOT of respect for her in that one paragraph. That was like she was itching for finding a way to blame him for this whole thing.
Then, hero of course decided to go ahead and put his foot in his mouth!
So bottom line, the problems, to me were superficial and would have been avoided with honest discussions which needed to come from the wife’s side. As for their married life and parenting, my two cents from a kids point of view, with troubled parents: what I felt was the guy who convinced himself like he did that he’s a failure as a father, this kind of guys tend to worship his wife, which he did, and the wife at the beginning enjoying that worship forgets they’re only human and she needs to recognise him for who he his, human and faults and all. And then comes the blame game. If she’d recognise his achievement as a father earlier in life and showed him that he IS being a good father I think we’d have had a different story. Not that the outcome with the kids would’ve been different, but their reaction to the news would’ve been different and they’d have been in it together rather than both of them being two isolated ships. And in all this, HE also forgot to tell his kids that he WORSHIPS her, and which means they need to do that to, however, if he treated her as his partner, his better half and with RESPECT that would have showed and kids would have known that hey, mum's the boss here now that dad's deployed. Boogie pointed put he only seemed to be defining himself by his job, which was SO true, because as I pointed earlier, he had already admitted defeat even before starting to be a father and decided he's a failure as a father, and he no longer knows what else defines him.
Now to the good part of the marriage:
1. I ABSOLUTELY love a spouse who is not just physically but emotionally faithful to his wife.
2. Unlike many heroes, this one DID recognize the OW's advances and he decided to be professional about it, because it's a woman's career. And also showed how non existent she was in his radar.
3. He saw her flirting, and sexual advances, and felt, precisely, nothing. He diplomatically avoided her, he recognised how much he loved his wife and no woman will ever do, however, at no point did he slut shame or did anything to jeopardize the OW's career. Because it's someone's career in navy. It's their whole life.
4. Loved how heroine didn't even for a minute doubt how bogus the charges were. It made up for her insecurities during her younger days.
However this brings to my next set of unease. I know it IS unfair on the hero, however the way the case was dismissed, was their any merit behind that? Basically it was his word vs hers and they decided to take his because his career was spotless and her evidences were only gossips. But if her allegations WERE true, then would the scenario have been any different? An XO who sexually harasses his subordinates usually DOES have spotless records......until, he doesn't. And the victim usually doesn't even have the benefit of the gossips as her evidence because no one will go against the XO.
So please tell me how that was a fair trial?
I don't want the hero to suffer, however, the OW, no matter how evil, no matter how false her accusations were, stood in front of a biased judge and was not given a fair trial. If she was indeed a victim, she'd have been given the exact same verdict.
However. Altogether, I am glad I asked Boogie for this book. And it was in fact $5.99 well spent!
However, for once, I did not want to murder the hero as per her expectation.
Shake him a couple of time?
that mayyyyyy have crossed my mind a couple of time.
A couple of head slaps?
Definitely!
But I didn't hate him.
May be because I have people in service in family? And I know how hard it is for the man as well.
It is REALLY easy to just look at the family and say but they are being uprooted and missing out on life. But not many stop to think how hard it is for the man as well. What toll it takes on them for the missed birth of the firstborn, the endless deployment, missing the dance recital of his baby girl.
Now our hero was a failure. Hands down. Not because he was bad husband, or a bad father. But because he had admitted defeat even before starting and from that point forward he started using that as an excuse to hide from his responsibilities and made his wife into a goddess.
She didn't deserve it. She was also an imperfect mortal. Who couldn't tell her son, that he's an asshole and a coward. She couldn't be stern with her kids because she felt she let them down by all the moves. That wasn't the really the right thing to do. Her job as a mother was to let them know that THEY are the kids, and they need to respect HER, not just their father.
She never told her husband that he was a coward, she didn't share ANY of her worries, she didn't share ANYTHING except his bed. She gave him a piece of her mind, but when? When everything fell apart, and when HE needed her support. That almost seemed petty. Seemed being the key word here.
Because it wasn't really. She didn't choose that precise moment. She just reached her limit.
However IF she talked to him throughout the years of marriage, the limit wouldn't have reached and he wouldn't have felt abandoned when he needed his family's support.
Boogie made a fair point, would he have listened?
He did at the end.
His ego, his career was important to him, but at no point of time was his woman any less important.
Because she let it slide, he just gotten worse. She was equally guilty in this whole thing as him.
It takes two to make a marriage, If he was absent, she was ignorant, thinking ignorance is bliss.
Was his promotion more important than anything else? Not really. I mean why was this even a question? The man worked all his life towards his goal. It was DAMN important. However, if his family had open communication, they'd have understood that and would've been able to work around it.
Now what i HATED, HATED about heroine.
Her jumping to wrong conclusions deliberately, either to start a fight, or to bottle it up.
When hero was talking about he was the ONLY one who made some sense. As heroine pointed out she had no clue what to do, and unlikely to come up with solution.
His solution was SPECIFICALLY towards that situation.
It was in NO WAY acceptable for heroine to take that as a reference to her pregnancy.
hero pointed out very logically. They were in love, they BOTH wanted to be married and they BOTH wanted the baby. Which wasn't the case here. I lost a LOT of respect for her in that one paragraph. That was like she was itching for finding a way to blame him for this whole thing.
Then, hero of course decided to go ahead and put his foot in his mouth!
So bottom line, the problems, to me were superficial and would have been avoided with honest discussions which needed to come from the wife’s side. As for their married life and parenting, my two cents from a kids point of view, with troubled parents: what I felt was the guy who convinced himself like he did that he’s a failure as a father, this kind of guys tend to worship his wife, which he did, and the wife at the beginning enjoying that worship forgets they’re only human and she needs to recognise him for who he his, human and faults and all. And then comes the blame game. If she’d recognise his achievement as a father earlier in life and showed him that he IS being a good father I think we’d have had a different story. Not that the outcome with the kids would’ve been different, but their reaction to the news would’ve been different and they’d have been in it together rather than both of them being two isolated ships. And in all this, HE also forgot to tell his kids that he WORSHIPS her, and which means they need to do that to, however, if he treated her as his partner, his better half and with RESPECT that would have showed and kids would have known that hey, mum's the boss here now that dad's deployed. Boogie pointed put he only seemed to be defining himself by his job, which was SO true, because as I pointed earlier, he had already admitted defeat even before starting to be a father and decided he's a failure as a father, and he no longer knows what else defines him.
Now to the good part of the marriage:
1. I ABSOLUTELY love a spouse who is not just physically but emotionally faithful to his wife.
2. Unlike many heroes, this one DID recognize the OW's advances and he decided to be professional about it, because it's a woman's career. And also showed how non existent she was in his radar.
3. He saw her flirting, and sexual advances, and felt, precisely, nothing. He diplomatically avoided her, he recognised how much he loved his wife and no woman will ever do, however, at no point did he slut shame or did anything to jeopardize the OW's career. Because it's someone's career in navy. It's their whole life.
4. Loved how heroine didn't even for a minute doubt how bogus the charges were. It made up for her insecurities during her younger days.
However this brings to my next set of unease. I know it IS unfair on the hero, however the way the case was dismissed, was their any merit behind that? Basically it was his word vs hers and they decided to take his because his career was spotless and her evidences were only gossips. But if her allegations WERE true, then would the scenario have been any different? An XO who sexually harasses his subordinates usually DOES have spotless records......until, he doesn't. And the victim usually doesn't even have the benefit of the gossips as her evidence because no one will go against the XO.
So please tell me how that was a fair trial?
I don't want the hero to suffer, however, the OW, no matter how evil, no matter how false her accusations were, stood in front of a biased judge and was not given a fair trial. If she was indeed a victim, she'd have been given the exact same verdict.
However. Altogether, I am glad I asked Boogie for this book. And it was in fact $5.99 well spent!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 10, 2017
The H and h go through 30 years of a Navy marriage where he wants to be a carrier ship commander. This puts enormous strain on their marriage and their kids, but they work through it until he gets accused of sexual harassment and his wife has had enough of him putting himself first. Really good story with a nice HEA
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2017
Epic romance novel. It was beautiful. I liked the realism and the total love between the two through the years.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2022
This was a well written book, but the husband was a total asshole. He was extremely self-centered and selfish and I would say he was very close to be a narcissist. I don't know why the wife loved him so much because she only got dick and kids. I just never got the impression he truly loved his family.
September 17, 2025
If anything I was annoyed with the fmc…like dude, put your damn foot down for once or thrice. Like shit would happen and he would have to leave or wasn’t there and she would cry for two minutes and then carry on— like no girl its not ok to do a road trip with 3 little ones by yourself—Anyway I felt pissed that he got to live his dream and she got to support it. Yay (eye roll) — the ow drama was tame.
August 10, 2022
I loved how well this book was written and how it goes through somebody that gives up everything so that her marriage and motherhood could survive I love how they told the story through there scrapbook of how the husband/father started his career as a naval officer and how he ranked up it was written as in real life .
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December 29, 2014Miniseries: Everlasting Love
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews