Return to Sender »

With over than sixty million copies of her books sold around the world, New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels pens romance after epic romance, each filled with all the drama and heartbreak her loyal fans can handle.

At seventeen, Rosalind “Lin” Townsend finds herself pregnant and alone. Her father, deeply religious yet cruel, throws her out of the house. Nick Pemberton, her baby’s father and the man she naively hoped might marry her, rejects her. Yet even at the lowest point in her life, Lin vows to succeed on her own terms, and to give her son, Will, all the love and happiness she’s been denied.

Nineteen years later, Lin has made good on her promises. She’s the owner of a thriving diner in her Georgia hometown, and Will has grown into a fine, intelligent young man who’s about to start his freshman year at NYU. But when Lin visits New York with Will, she crosses paths with the one man she was sure she’d never see again—Nick Pemberton, now a millionaire CEO, the man who sent back all her letters unopened, marked “Return to Sender.” Seeing him fills Lin with anger — and she resolves to right the wrong he did to Will.

Helped by Jason, a hired detective, and her best friend, Sally, Lin sets out to disrupt Nick’s life and his finances, with spectacular results. But the truth is more complex and surprising than she imagined. And soon Lin must choose — between the revenge she thought would free her, and the bright new future that’s about to be delivered to her door…

Publishers Weekly

Even if the plot of Michaels's latest (after The Scoop) was meant to be a farce, it remains unbelievably ludicrous. Lin Townsend, raised by a religious zealot, had a rough childhood and got pregnant when she was 17. Thrown out of her home, she raises her son, Will, poor and alone, and the letters she sends over the years to Nick Pemberton, Will's father, are returned to sender. Lin eventually saves enough to send Will to NYU, but just before his freshman year, Lin runs into Nick, who is now married, wealthy, and has no clue who Lin is. And so Lin vows revenge: her plot is to “tie up” Nick's money and to make him suffer like she did for all those years. Meanwhile, Nick discovers he has leukemia and decides to cut off his bitch of a wife, who has her own dastardly plans. None of it is especially believable, and the characters are either underdeveloped or maddeningly inconsistent. Additionally, Michaels's prose is frequently slapdash (“It wasn't possible, yet her common sense told her it was highly probable!”), but that's unlikely to diminish the book's commercial prospects. (May)