Lake Union Publishing, March 15, 2016.
Four Stars
Wow, this was a lot of drama for one family – fortunately,
the plot device used to reveal all the drama was unique and interesting. As the
novel begins, Luke has just returned home from his wife Natalie’s funeral,
faced with the prospect of raising their three children alone. He is shocked to
find a letter waiting for him – a letter Natalie wrote on her first day of
cancer treatment, a year earlier. The letters keep coming, and although Luke has
no idea who is mailing them, they become his greatest comfort.
That is, until Natalie’s letters begin to refer to
secrets she has been keeping from Luke throughout their sixteen-year marriage. Between
Luke’s own tragic childhood and Natalie’s complicated past with her high school
boyfriend, the secrets just keep coming. The three children have their own
issues, and Luke’s mother-in-law brings along more drama when she comes to
visit. And we haven’t even gotten to Natalie’s best friend Annie and her
suspicious husband Brian, or the babysitter Jessie and her mysterious illness.
Although there did seem to be an overload of
mysterious drama, I did appreciate the fact that it didn’t follow a completely
predictable path. At the beginning of the novel, I thought it would focus on
Luke’s journey to heal after losing his wife – and it did, but there was a
lightness to it, because of the mysteries he was busy solving. The letters
distracted Luke from his sorrow, but the exploration of the past also kept the
novel from focusing only on manipulating the reader’s emotions in the wake of
Natalie’s cancer.
The only complaint I had was that everything was
wrapped up too quickly and easily in the end – if I were Luke, I would have
been asking a lot more questions, but maybe he was in shock after everything that
happened to him. Overall, the novel was probably more like three stars, but I’m
giving it extra points because I couldn’t put it down, and it was just so much
fun to try to figure out all of Natalie’s secrets.
I received this novel from Netgalley and Lake Union
Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
Who do you think this novel was written for?
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