Review of "A Thousand More" by K.S. Lynn

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

A Thousand More by K.S. Lynn is arguably the most sophisticated and ambitious romance novel that we've read this year!

Who would've thought that this wild story was born from a dream in 2005? Who would've thought the first 25 pages were lost due to a hard-drive crash (or something like that) and that the book was only continued in 2019? You can really tell that the author put a lot of thought into crafting this novel and its characters—arguably too much. It's dense, complex, complicated, and loaded to the brim of tragedy, twists, and drama.This book is a gordian knot of good, great, and ambitious ideas. Some of them work, some of them don't. Some of them serve as window dressing.

K.S. Lynn threw everything but the kitchen sink into trying to make this book hit as hard as possible. Sometimes, it seems excessive and unnecessary. Sometimes, it actually is impactful and engaging.

Nonetheless, this is a gripping, heart wrenching romance mixed with familial, generational, and psychological drama (and trauma)!

How much can love endure?
What about the ghosts we carry around in our hearts? Trust issues. Insecurities. The pain of previous losses. The hurt of prior betrayals. The struggle to have kids. Health issues. Traumatic events like accidents. Memory loss.

Can true love survive it all?
And when love is lost, can you learn to love again?

To say that A Thousand More follows one or more main characters in one timeline/timeframe would be selling it short. The book actually spans several decades and involves family secrets, twins, mistaken identity, and so much more.

Are you ready to read us try to untangle this gordian knot of a plot and its characters?
SPOILER WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

A Thousand More mostly centers around two main couples who fell in love decades ago:
Liam & Michelle and Scott & Shelby (Danielle).

Now, are you really ready for SPOILERS because we can't explain this story without them. Our heads would explode.

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

So, Michelle and Shelby are actually twins. What's kind of strange about this is that this doesn't really seem to matter until the accident/amnesia angle. It's a huge "AHA!" moment. But if you don't pick up the hints, clues, and breadcrumbs along the way, you might find yourself more confused than impressed by this twist. Anyway, the twist was still impactful for us.

Michelle and Shelby/Danielle were separated at birth due to one of them being premature and needing special care and attention.

Michelle grew up with a neighbor who became a very close friend and whom she fell deeply in love with, Bradley Cole (usually just called "Brad"). Bradley dies before most of the major events of the book and his death clearly haunts Michelle for the rest of her life. She has nightmares of his death and dreams of him returning. His figurative ghost hangs over her and her relationship with her eventual husband, Liam.

Liam was Brad's best friend. On the day that Brad died, he asked Liam to take care of Michelle if anything was to happen to him. Gosh, that's very heavy and also very melodramatic and convenient. A lot of this book feels like that. It's a really strange mixture of, "Gosh, I'm really impressed by the heaviness of what's happening, but I'm also not impressed by how contrived it feels." Sometimes, it does seem like a lot of great ideas got tacked onto this book in later drafts like window dressing, as we alluded to earlier. It sometimes feels like there are three different books with three different plots that got written together into this one.

There's the plot about Michelle overcoming her loss of Brad and learning to love again.

There's the plot about Michelle and Liam's relationship and issues like potential infertility, raising kids, trust issues (with people like Stacy), arguing about large expenses (like the cottage), a miscarriage, and competing with the shadow of a ghost (like Brad's).

Then there's the plot about Scott being hot and engaging in a relationship with Shelby, having kids and all that.

Then there's the plot about Michelle actually not being alive, Shelby/Danielle's amnesia and taking up this new life/identity as Michelle, and all the stuff that comes with that.

So, that's like four different plots and four different books.

So, you're definitely getting value and your money's worth if you just wanted a dense book to keep your mind occupied for a week.

Gosh, then you have to fit in Sam's arc. Oh, and Martha's.

It sometimes feels like every Korean drama or telenovela cliche got written into this.

You know, it's actually easier to think of this book as two major parallel stories: Michelle's and Shelby's.

Their lives do parallel each other in a lot of ways. Speaking of Sam and Martha from earlier, their characters actually mirror each other as well.

The fractured and fragmented nature of this book, cutting across multiple decades and following multiple perspectives, reflects Shelby/Danielle's fractured mind in the later portions of this book (post-accident).

We admire the ambition and the attempt. We're not sure it always worked, but it was worth a try.
And we definitely came away from this book feeling like we went through an emotional, compelling, and engaging experience.

In closing, Scott is definitely a nominee for Hottest Character and Bear (the Bernese dog) is a nominee for Cutest Character. Of course, there's an argument to be made that Michelle-Liam, Shelby-Scott, and Shelby-Liam are nominees for Best Couple.

This book has not yet been released.