I don’t often find books or authors that I fall in love with completely and wholeheartedly. It is even more rare that I find a book that keeps my eyes filled with tears and a smile on my face the whole way through, or a book that makes me breathe more deeply and think more clearly and read more slowly so I don’t miss a single word.

But recently I read Love Walked In by Marisa De Los Santos and it fit into every one of these categories and then some. It was the kind of book that took over my life for a couple days, and all I ever wanted to be doing was reading it. I remember at one point leaving my room to get something to eat and thinking for a moment, “I can’t leave, I don’t want to miss anything,” before I remembered that it was a book, not a movie or real life. I had to take it with me everywhere and have a pen with me to mark my favourite lines. After finishing it I lent it to my roommate Jen, and she loved it so much that she asked me to read it out loud to her while she drove us for two hours back to our hometown. I did, stopping only when something struck us and we just had to discuss the pure amazingness that is every word of Marisa De Los Santos’ writing. It made me so happy when Jen said she couldn’t return the book right away, because she needed to read it a second time.

Right now I’m reading the sequel to Love Walked In, Belong to Me and I’m happy to report that it meets the incredibly high expectations that I had for it. Here’s a quote from it:

Chicken Soup for the Soul. You’ve heard of these books, am I right? We’ve all heard of them. But I wonder if you’re aware just how many Chicken Soup books exist on the planet. No offense, but I doubt it. I doubt it because in the time that it would take you to come up with a number, the number would have become obselete. Even as you read this, in some quiet, fecund place, another Chicken Soup book is being born.

I’ve never actually opened up one of these books, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the supposition underlying the series: that souls are highly specific, that they come in a multiplicity of shapes and permutations, that one cannot assume that what heals the NASCAR soul would do diddly for the horse lover’s soul.

The stories themselves are captivating, but what gets me is the way the author takes something completely ordinary and twists it into something completely wonderful. And she keeps doing that, over and over and over again. If you are always on the hunt for that perfect book, these just may be it. Read them (read Love Walked In first) and get back to me. And if you have a recommendation for my next book, please let me know.