Discussion Guide for LOVED ME ONCE

LOVED ME ONCE
by Gail Hewitt

List Price: $14.50 for trade paperback edition
$6.50 for Kindle edition
$6.50 for Mobipocket edition

Pages: 317 + x

Format: Trade paperback
Kindle
Mobipocket

ISBN: 1441469826
EAN-13: 9781441469823

Publisher: ArbeitenZeit Media

About This Book

“An odd sort of feeling came over her, a kind of warmth that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was as if she’d been wandering alone, and now suddenly felt she’d reached what she’d been seeking and, amazingly, it was Miles who waited there.”

December 2008: Maggie McLaurin has it all: beauty; brains; sex appeal; chic New York condo; and what many would consider a dream job. But appearances are deceptive. She’s also burdened with an acute lack of self-regard, a tradition of bad relationships, a staggering load of debt, and full responsibility for the mother from hell. As Christmas 2008 approaches, Maggie – while conducting training seminars in the middle of a blizzard at a Victorian resort in New York – is hit by a perfect storm of personal, professional, and financial crises, and must make choices that are complicated by her emotional isolation.

One option is to continue to go it alone, coping as best she can in spite of the worry that eats perpetually at her. Another is to allow a willing man to rescue her – a task made more palatable by the fact that she’s fallen head over heels in love for the first time since she was a girl. Even love, however, doesn’t keep her from second-guessing the wisdom of allowing anyone the power to hurt her ever again.

Given her unfortunate history, can she trust either of the men seemingly offering her salvation? Should she take the job of a lifetime unexpectedly dangled before her by the old-boy-friend-who-made-good, the one who “loved me once,” even though he subsequently humiliated her, broke her heart, and hung onto embarrassing Polaroids of her seventeen-year-old self? Or should she turn, instead, to the insistent, well-connected lover, the romantic who’s determined to put his great-grandmother’s “gossip-column diamond” on her third finger, left hand (as long as she’ll accept the strings he attaches)? This decision matters.

A sharply written look at the world of contemporary business and those who keep it interesting, LOVED ME ONCE shows that things are rarely what they seem.

Discussion Questions

One) What was it like to read a romantic novel in which – in addition to the usual love-interest issues – the heroine must contend with responsibilities for an aging parent, moreover a difficult parent?

Two) What were your first impressions of Maggie McLaurin? Was her obsession with her professional responsibilities usual for a professional woman, or did she take it to extremes? Do you think that the primary motivator for her work ethic was that she was in such desperate need of money, or was it that she found professional achievement the most-reliable means of validating herself in her own eyes? Or do you think her work obsession related more to the fact that she was simply a creature of habit – she’d been brought up to be reliable, she’d always been reliable, and she’d keep on being reliable, no matter what?

Three) Why do you think that Maggie’s mother disliked her? Do you think it was appropriate for Maggie to react by dreading contact with her mother? Did Maggie’s punctiliousness in handling her mother’s situation make you think more of her for being conscientious, or less of her for doing what she did from a sense of obligation to fulfill the promise she’d made her father rather than from love for her mother? Do you think that Maggie would have been as careful about looking out for her mother’s interests if she hadn’t made the promise to her father? Do you think Maggie was wrong to listen to her mother’s original doctor who advised keeping her in her home, difficult as that was? Or should she years before have cut her losses, moved her mother to less-expensive lodgings, and done a better job of looking after her own financial interests?

Four) What were your first impressions of Miles Brewster? Did you think that Miles was an admirable character, or was he spoiled – or a little bit of both?

Five) Why do you think Miles Brewster was so obsessed with Maggie? Did he honestly admire her that much, did he recognize a genuine soul mate in her, or do you think it was more that he was piqued because she didn’t pay the same attention to him as had most women he’d encountered?

Six) How often do you think people take another look at someone they’ve known for some time and realize that their feelings have shifted – as Maggie did with Miles Brewster? Why do you think that Maggie, once she truly took a good look at Miles, fell so hard for him? Do you think the Victorian-resort-at-Christmastime setting played a role in her mood, or could it have happened anywhere?

Seven) What were your first impressions of T. Merriman “Tom” Scott? Do you think that he tried hard enough to reconnect with Maggie when she was a teenager, or did his pride and anger at her seeming preference for boys of her own economic and social class blind him to the fact that he had an emotional responsibility to this younger romantic partner who’d taken his proposal and protestations of love at face value?

Eight) What did you think of the relationship between Tom Scott and his executive coach Jameson Halbrooks? Do you think that Tom was just being sensible in allowing Halbrooks, to guide his attempts to resolve his lingering resentment at the way his relationship with Maggie ended when they first knew each other? Or should he have told Halbrooks that this was a personal issue and that he’d work through it in his own way?

Nine) Do you think that extremely wealthy men like Tom Scott are right to pursue their vision of a better world, or should they leave this kind of society-improving initiative to the experts, that is, those who trained specifically in educational theory and sociology? Most acknowledged experts are academics. Do you think their relative distance from the rough and tumble of “life in the field” gives them a better balanced perspective, or does it make them less realistic about what can be accomplished?

Ten) Why do you suppose that “first love” – like the passion that Maggie felt for Tom Scott when they first knew each other – is so intense? Is it because we have nothing against which to assess it and so it hits us harder than later affairs for which we have benchmarks? Or is it because, in retrospect, it can assume more importance than, perhaps, it really had?

Eleven) Do you think that Tom and Maggie each fully believed the other when explanations were provided about the reason their earlier relationship ended as it had? How much do you think that the earlier romantic relationship affected Maggie and Tom’s later attempts to establish a friendly professional relationship? Do you think that either of them ever quite forgave the other?

Twelve) Which did you think was the more appealing man: Miles Brewster, the charmer with the good family background and an assured role in life, or Tom Scott, the demanding, somewhat arrogant poor-boy-made-good?

Thirteen) Do you think that the attempt of the teenaged Maggie’s mother to keep her apart from Tom Scott by concealing the fact that he’d come looking for her was justified? Do parents usually know better than kids when it comes to relationships?

Fourteen) Do you think that Maggie’s choices in jobs and men were correct? Or should she have sought a completely different direction?

Fifteen) Do you think that the ending of the book is the beginning of “happily ever after?”

© 2009, Gail Hewitt. All rights reserved.

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