Review: Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff

“Yes,” he said. “Even though the sky is already filled with stars, you can always make your own.”
Fireworks Over Toccoa – Jeffrey Stepakoff

Short but light, Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff is a nice novel and a quick read. Opening in 2007, grandmother Lily recounts the story of a love affair she had in the summer of 1945, days before her husband was due to return home from the war. Having only been married for a short time before her husband was sent overseas, Lily feels as though her privileged life has been missing something. Unhappy with her restrictions, yearning to break free from society’s expectations, Lily follows the tail of a firework and finds Jake Russo, young, handsome, damaged, and passionate. During their brief time together they explore the boundaries and battles of true love. But Lily’s familial and domestic duties bound her to Toccoa, while Jake’s life expects him to leave.

One could say this was a pleasant sort of novel. The writing was not bad, the character voices were realistic, the setting was perfect, and the images were lovely. But if I’m to be perfectly honest, the flaws that I found outweigh the nicer parts.

Lily seems quite happy with her life before her husband is sent to war. We are told how they met, how he loved to watch her, how she was different from other girls, brash and bold, and basically how she charmed him and they were happy together. Yes, they were only married a brief time before he was sent away for years, but I found inconsistencies in Lily’s narrative about how she had always felt unhappy in Toccoa. If that’s how she truly felt, why was she written so happy before? Why not show us in the beginning that she was unhappy, instead of making it a later excuse for her to fall for the Fireworks Man days before her husband is due to return? It seems to me like the reasons we’re given to justify her love for Jake are thrown together as the novel progresses, instead of being constructed in the beginning. I was glad when Lily’s father told her to pull it together when he figured out she was up to something, since, to me, she was being selfish and unrealistic. We’re told she talked to her husband frequently during the years he was away, so why now? Why this unexpected (convenient) emotion that she’s supposedly had all along?

Additionally, the similarities to other works of fiction were too obvious to pass up. Take the beginning of the movie Titanic (old lady sees news article about a recently found artifact that used to be hers which brings up memories of old love affair), and add it to the middle of The Notebook (including a slow-motion run-toward-each-other-in-the-rain scene), pick one of the few available endings, and you’ve got Fireworks Over Toccoa. Now, none of these works are bad per se, but they’ve all been done before, so reading them in a new novel is a bit redundant. I’m always piqued when I feel like an author is assuming I’ll be okay with gross similarities such as these.

I was a little surprised to see that Stepakoff has been a television producer and screenwriter for some years, as it would seem to me that the number one rule you should never break is having your work be so similar to another that readers are annoyed. I find it hard to believe editors wouldn’t notice. The back cover says Fireworks is “The next great love story.” But really, the love stories in this novel have already been told. If you like these types of books, you will like Fireworks Over Toccoa, as I said, it’s not bad. But if you really are looking for “the next great love story,” I might pass by this one.

3 stars

If you are interested in Fireworks Over Toccoa, visit www.FireworksOverToccoa.com for a sneak-peek and a chance to win one of several prizes.

(I received an advanced copy from the publisher)