An incredibly sincere and often sweet read, _Once_ is definitely good and definitely worth reading, though L.T. Smith's _See Right Through Me_ remains my absolute favorite of hers. Lovable and very endearing and adorable Dudley (a dog who will just melt your soul) is my favorite character in this touching book whose cover truly matches its spirit and heart.

Normally, I love that almost all of L.T. Smith's novels share a common theme in how insecure two people can be about each other's feelings when they are first getting to know each other. I really, really get self doubt so it would seem perfectly natural to me that two people could actually like each other and yet have no clue about it or any confidence in their own appeal. This motif in Ms. Smith's fiction is a big reason why I love her books so much.

But with _Once_ I became physically exhausted by it all, at times. It's not the writer's fault at all...if anything, this time around she's captured the pain of self doubt better than ever before, along with an underlying darkness and deep sadness to both women's relationship histories.

I also found myself very, very troubled by an early scene in the novel where the main character punches her ex very, very hard in the face. It made painfully lovely passages lose some of their power because Beth really is not all that likable at times: "It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that Amy was the person I wanted to be with; it was more a case of not being able to trust that anyone would want to be with me. Like Groucho Marx said, he didn’t want to be a member of any club that would accept him as a member."

Perhaps I am being a bit overly sensitive to this part and the main character does believe her ex has been abusing her dog when she punches her. The thing is she does not know for sure her ex hurt her dog and when she realizes later she did not there is no real remorse on her part and that just disturbs me so very much. ( )