Girl in the Spotlight

Readers can always count on Virginia McCullough to deliver stories with heart and soul. Girl in the Spotlight gives Miles Jenkins and Lark McGee a second chance to find the love their casual college romance and inopportune pregnancy cost them. Seventeen years after they give up their daughter for adoption, Miles’ seven-year-old figure skating fan daughter draws his attention to a rising skating star who happens to have been adopted, is the “right” age with the “right” birthdate, and a telltale widows peak and heart-shaped face that reminds him of Lark. Thus begins Miles’ and Lark’s journey to meet the daughter they gave up and their own reuniting, both now divorced, both with a child of their own. Expect a heartwarming and eventful voyage that not only brings the principal parties together, but deals with ex-spouses’, a teenage son’s, and a young fangirl’s reactions to learning there’s another child in the mix and the growing closeness between Miles and Lark. Even their daughter’s adopted parents are involved with the impending meet, which is being delayed because of the upcoming Olympics and World Championships. There can be no distraction for the Girl in the Spotlight. Perrie Lynn may be the girl at the center of everything this story is about. But this isn’t her story. It’s the story of the two people who gave her up so she could have the life she was meant to have. It is the story of the complications of reunions between adopted children and their birth parents and how it affects far more people than the man and woman and the girl they gave birth to and then let go. I highly recommend Girl in the Spotlight as well as any book written by Virginia McCullough. Her characters are relatable as they could be any one of us. Her stories are about trials any one of us might face. And she writes with a quiet grace that draws one in. Reviewed by Barbara Raffin, author of the St. John Sibling Series