Disclaimer! I got a free ARC of this through NetGalley. I have not been promised anything in return for this review, although if people wanted to start bribing me to read their books, that would be ok too.
Kate Pheris has been a widow for a year, and has been sleep-walking through her life since her husband Matt died. Now her house has been sold, her and her daughter’s things are all packed and they’re all set to move in with her mother-in-law, who has all sorts of plans for how they’re going to get everything sorted out. Yet finally emerging from her grief, Kate realises that she doesn’t want to live with her mother-in-law, and she doesn’t want her daughter Devin to go to private school, forced to wear a school uniform and stifle her natural creativity. Having never really had to manage on her own, she’s not sure what she will do, but she’s sure that just settling for her mother-in-law’s plans are not it. When Devin finds an old postcard in a trunk in the attic, Kate is reminded of her great-aunt Eby and her holiday cottages at Lost Lake. Kate spent a few weeks there when she was twelve, and as she has only fond memories from the place, she packs up Devin and they go off to see if Eby is still there.
(…)
I’m a huge fan of Sarah Addison Allen’s earlier books, my particular favourites being Garden Spells and The Peach Keeper. Reading the acknowledgements for this book, I realised that the reason there was such a gap between The Peach Keeper and this coming out, is because the author has been struggling with breast cancer. I didn’t know that when I picked this book as my fifty-second book, and the one I completed my first Cannonball with, but now I’m so glad I did, because it’s extra appropriate. Cancer is a horrible disease, and I’m so glad that I can help collect money to fight it by reading books that I love and blogging about them for others.
The rest of my review can be found here. I’m off to correct more English essays and do my happy dance of achievement now.