If you’re a fan of NCIS (What Do We Have on the DVR?), you’re familiar with the “rules” of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon. Some of my favorites? Rule #11 – when the job is done, walk away. Rule #45 – clean up your own messes. Rule #91 – when you decide to walk away, don’t look back. But I would have to say the one that keeps coming back around is Rule #39: There’s no such thing as a coincidence.

Some people might call it divine intervention, maybe predestination. Some might still call it a coincidence. But I tend to side with Gibbs. I’m not sure there are coincidences in life. You could easily call them coincidence, chance, and that’s your prerogative. I feel there’s a higher power at work. He doesn’t dictate or drive our lives. We have free will, after all. But I do believe that He puts things in our path that make us stop and say “hmm.”

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #1

Some things are small. A few months ago, I was talking with Dennis’s cousin Dean about the game The Sims, which I have played since its release in 2000. The most recent version of the game is The Sims 4 (and rumors are currently swirling about The Sims 5). I don’t have the time to play as much as I used to, but when the original version of the game came out, I was single and living alone. And I was obsessed.

I explained to Dean that I used to have an Excel spreadsheet with a tab for each family in each neighborhood in the game (nine families per neighborhood, five neighborhoods, so 45 tabs). I printed it out on 11×14 paper so that I could track progress while I played. (I told you, obsessed.)

Two days after Dean and I had that discussion, Revive Social, which is the plug-in that sends out previous posts on Twitter and Facebook, sent out my blog post about The Sims (The Power Trip of Playing God). Revive Social is completely random. I’ve set it to re-release two days per week on each platform, and it can go back to my very first post but nothing from the previous 90 days. There were about 100 possible posts that could have gone out that particular day. When I sent Dean the link and mentioned the irony that it was that blog post we had just been talking about, he literally said, “Crazy coincidence!”

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #2

I wrote another post about Corinne’s experience at a theater program in New York through the National Student Leadership Conference (This One Time at Summer Camp….). Her roommate in the program is performing in her school’s production of Our Town in November, and Corinne and I are making the trip to Oklahoma to see her.

Another friend that Corinne and her roommate made actually lives in Illinois. Corinne texted with her before they all arrived in New York, and her school recently performed The Skin of Our Teeth. I bought tickets literally six days before the show without ever having heard of the play. We discovered something interesting while reading the program. The two best friends Corinne made during this theater program both had fall performances in Pulitzer Prize-winning plays by Thornton Wilder, and we’re seeing both of them a month apart. What are the odds?

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #3

And then there are the “no such thing as a coincidence” coincidences that feel like they have a bigger meaning.

This summer, we took our second Disney cruise. We wanted it to be special and to honor Dennis on that trip. Disney sends color-coded luggage tags by mail so they know where to bring your luggage once you arrive at the port. Ours happened to be purple, which is the color symbolizing pancreatic cancer, which is what took Dennis from us. On our first cruise, we met one crew member in Guest Services who was from Trinidad (Dennis’s home country). On the most recent trip, we had an Uber driver who grew up in Trinidad, and two of our wait staff for the entire week were from Trinidad. I know that Dennis wasn’t physically with us on that trip, but he was definitely there.

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #4

Dennis’s oldest daughter Tenielle’s birthday is in September, and I completely flaked this year. When I realized I hadn’t sent her anything, I quickly placed two orders, one for what I called her “real” gift (which wouldn’t arrive until a few days after her birthday), and one for flowers and chocolates that I specifically picked because they were available for delivery that day.

I texted Tenielle and let her know, but later in the day, I got a notification that the flowers and chocolates actually weren’t available for same-day delivery. In fact, they weren’t going to be delivered until five days after Tenielle’s birthday…even after the other gift. We laughed about it. I apologized. Tenielle, of course, said not to worry about it. A couple days later, I received a text update indicating that the flowers would arrive a day earlier than expected…on the 20th…which was the second anniversary of Dennis’s death. I let her know they were coming and that I wholeheartedly believe that all the mix-ups were by design. Dennis wanted to wish her a happy birthday.

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #5

Also last month, Corinne was scheduled to play in the Powder Puff football game during Homecoming week. The game happened to be on September 20. Now as far as Dennis was concerned, American football is not a real sport. He was all about soccer. But I like football, and Corinne enjoys playing for fun. The day of the game, the weather was fine all day. The first game was scheduled at 6:30, the second at 7:00, and the winners of the first two games were supposed to play at 7:30.

But at 5:30, I received a text notification for a severe thunderstorm warning until 6:30. At 6:15, I received a new text extending the warning until 7:30. They had to cancel the games that day. There were torrential downpours and so much lightning…from 6:30 until 8:30, when they were supposed to be playing. Then it just stopped, and it was once again a beautiful day. I told Corinne that her father clearly didn’t want her playing football on his anniversary.

“No Such Thing as a Coincidence” Coincidence #6

Final story before the review…just another thing to make you go “hmm.” I have a reading order list for all of the books I have queued up for reviews based on release dates and when I think I’ll be able to finish each book. The book reviewed below was sent to me on October 3. I already had a few reviews scheduled to post, and I was in the middle of reading something. I had to shift things around on my reading list, and I eventually got this one squeezed in for October 31…just before the release, but I didn’t start reading it until October 16.

These dates are important.

On October 10, I was at home working, and I started to see sparkling light in my left eye. That’s the only way I could think to describe it. I was a little freaked out, so of course, I went to Dr. Google. That freaked me out even more because I kept seeing articles about retinal detachment, it can cause blindness in hours or days, call your eye doctor immediately. I actually called an ophthalmologist, and they had a cancellation for the next morning. The light went away about 30 minutes later, but I kept the appointment.

I didn’t have retinal detachment. The doctor said it was very likely an ocular migraine. (Side note: I recently started a new role at work and had been working crazy hours in front of a computer all day.) According to the doctor, the primary causes of ocular migraine are stress ✅, lack of sleep ✅, and increased caffeine intake ✅. I took it as a warning to start paying more attention. I have since tried to get more sleep and less caffeine. I can’t do much about the stress right now, but I’m working on it.

So fast forward back to October 16 when I start reading this book, which I really didn’t know anything about beforehand. Five days after I went to the ophthalmologist worried about retinal detachment, I met Emily Main…who is blind…from (you guessed it) retinal detachment in both eyes.

How’s that for a “no such thing as a coincidence” coincidence?

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Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Over Every Hurdle by Barbara Hinske

350 pages
Publisher: Casa del Northern Publishing
Publication Date: November 3, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from Casa del Northern Publishing.

Publisher’s Description

Emily’s new relationship with Grant is jeopardized by pre-adolescent animosity between their respective young charges. Will potential love be derailed or will Gina swoop in to calm troubled waters?

Meanwhile, in the face of a looming cyberattack, Emily and Garth travel to Denver to assist the company’s cybersecurity team—only to find that their unsolicited aid is most unwelcome. There’s no time, however, to worry about workplace drama.

Emily and Zoe are busy with Gina’s wedding (which will prove more challenging than anyone could have imagined) and the surprise birthday party they’re throwing for Stephanie. Is Stephanie the only one who will be surprised at this party, or do she and Dhruv have their own bombshell planned?

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Main Characters:

Thank you to the author for including a summary of recurring characters at the end of the book, so I didn’t have to keep track of everything myself. 😊

• Emily Main – divorced; department head of a top-notch programming team at a technology giant; lost her eyesight when her retinas detached in a riding accident on her honeymoon
• Martha Main – Emily’s mother; widowed
• Zoe – fourth-grader who lost both of her parents in an accident, Emily took guardianship after Zoe’s grandmother died
• Garth – Emily’s black lab guide dog
• Gina Roberts – Emily’s lifelong best friend; she marries Craig during this part of the series
• Grant Roberts – Craig’s twin brother; Emily’s love interest
• Deidre Roberts – Grant’s fourth-grade daughter who just started at the same school as Zoe
• Dhruv – senior programmer on Emily’s team; the best programmer she has ever worked with; has been dating Stephanie; convinced Emily to attend the Foundation for the Blind when she lost her sight
• Stephanie Wolf – third-grade teacher at Zoe and Deidre’s school; lives in the same building as Emily; they were classmates at the Foundation for the Blind

One thing I have learned about Barbara Hinske’s books…there is a LOT going on…always.

Over Every Hurdle is the final book in a three-book series but can easily be read as a stand-alone. There were a couple of plot elements that I made notes on early in the book (how did Emily go blind, why did her marriage end, why the reference to her and Gina having a falling out). The story provides answers to all of those questions, but of course, those answers made me wish I had read the first two books before reading this one. Alas, there are only so many hours in a day and many books to be read and reviewed. And since I committed to reviewing this before the release date…well, there just wasn’t time. Those are stories for another day.

As I mentioned, there is a lot going on in this book: Emily’s new relationship with Grant (love), a bridal shower (always fun), Gina’s wedding to Grant’s twin brother (they never go perfectly), a new fourth-grade friendship (best part of the book), a looming cybersecurity attack, a surprise birthday party, a <can’t tell you, spoiler>, a <can’t tell you, spoiler>, and finally a <can’t tell you, spoiler>.😉 All of this intermixed with Emily’s challenges dealing with people not knowing the law about access for service animals, which is probably more common than most of us realize. I love that Hinske was able to bring awareness to that issue through this story.

There were many things I enjoyed about this book. I reviewed another book recently that had a cat as a central character in the story. I knocked the rating down on that one for a number of reasons but a big thing was just a couple chapters “voiced” by the cat. It was jarring when they popped up. They didn’t add anything. In Over Every Hurdle, every few chapters we get a first-person narrative from Garth, and in this case, I really liked it. It worked.

Service animals need to be in tune with their humans. They need to know things before they happen, and I think this is the element that Garth’s chapters bring to the story. Garth feels Emily’s nerves when she has to present to the security team in Denver, even though she outwardly appears confident. He senses tension between the characters. He knows instinctively that Diedre feels out of place at Gina’s bridal shower.

Switching the point of view to each of these characters would have made the book even more chaotic. Describing those details from Garth’s perspective keeps the POVs to a minimum and gives us a really heart-warming view into the comfort dogs can provide.

I loved the budding best friendship between Zoe and Diedre, who both start out thinking that the other one doesn’t like them. Kids make friends easily, and that trait is demonstrated so well here. Gina pretty much tricks them into spending a day together with her, and they become best of friends for the rest of the book. They’re nine. It felt completely realistic.

So why 4 stars? As I said, there is a lot going on, and I know it’s the final book in this series. It could very well be that Hinske needed to wrap up all the story lines, but it felt like too much. Every time I started a new chapter, there could be something else added to the mix. And that leads into the “wrap up” idea. There were plenty of bumps in the story line along the way but not a ton of conflict. Tension…yes. Legit conflict…not so much. Conflict takes time to work through, and with the number of plot elements, that means a much longer book. Then you risk it being too long and drawn out…which this absolutely was not.

All in all, there’s so much to like about this book, I recommend reading the whole series. Yes, even though I haven’t read the first two. I’ve only read a few titles by Hinske, but I know there will be more. Nice characters, sweet storylines, easy writing style…and dogs. Always dogs. What’s not to love about that? 🐶

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