Stuffed poignantly with sugary charm, Insignificant Moments, a romance by Jeremy Asher, is a pleasant read with a hint of a storyline that has a whisper of Nicholas Sparks. Asher is one our own, an Indiana native who grew up in the little town of New Haven and currently resides in Fort Wayne with his wife (an English teacher) and three children. After spending much of his life writing for his own pleasure, Asher sent the woman he was dating (his current wife) a short story he had written as means of impressing her. With her encouragement to write a full length book, Asher produced Insignificant Moments some years later.

Asher’s book takes the reader back and forth over the course of five years into the lives of three seemingly unrelated characters: Jaye, a library worker in the midst of a quarter life crisis, Julie, a young woman trying to find a compromise between love and reality, and Anna, a widowed mother looking to start her life over again. Over the years, they discover that their actions (their seeming insignificant moments) have a huge impact on their own their lives and the lives of others. Companionship, grief, marriage, and love both won and lost lace each of their stories as they learn that life so often mysteriously works out for the best.

Though Insignificant Moments does tend to fall into a pattern of predictability that is often found in romances, Asher does a fairly good job of incorporating all loose ends together which ties each all the characters’ lives together in sometimes surprising ways. This is an enjoyable, feel-good book for any afternoon or evening of light reading.