“Sweet, clean, and ‘Hallmark’ in a book.”

Review by Ashlynn Brown

It’s hard to know who you can trust, when you can’t remember your past.

Katherine is an artist struggling with the grief of losing her mother at a young age. When her father dies, she and her sister unexpectedly inherit a house in Westchester Bay—a house she doesn’t remember.
When she finds a strange collection of old letters addressed to her, she starts to question everything. Her dreams and drawings all seem to hold a secret, a hint of who she was before the day her mother died.
While searching for answers, she befriends Janson Caswell: a kindhearted man with a complicated past of his own. The deeper their relationship grows, though, the more they are faced with a darker reality.
Will the truth tear them apart?

I received this book from the author/publisher for free. All comments and opinions are entirely my own and this review is voluntary.

Sweet, clean, and "Hallmark" in a book. I’m a beach and small town lover and this book definitely hit the mark in those areas. Wonderful scenes that made me crave a beach trip! However, I did find the story, characters, and conversations lacking.

The characters did have some deeper emotions about things that were bothering them or what they were going through. Yes, it talked about loss, forgiveness and redemption, however I felt like some of the scenarios, major selling points of the book, were not well written. I also felt confused a few times because of the way the conversations went and sometimes they were a little painful.

We see that there is a “mystery” surrounding the house and the memories, and the mystery of the house was okay but the memory part just kinda made me go “hmm” I felt like she tried to make it this big deal, but she fell short.

As far as the characters go, I had a hard time connecting to Katherine. I feel like she just didn’t handle relationships all that well, or just talking to people in general. Even the way she interacted with her sister. Now I know she’s been through a lot with the loss of her mom and the accident and those things are very real, so I tried to give her some grace in those areas.

Overall, I read the book pretty quickly and in the second sitting. It was cute, clean, and despite not completely understanding, I did want to know about the “mystery” behind the letters and the house. I’m a sucker for a long lost friendship turned relationship troupe. I can see the sister Maude being the main character if Havelah decides to write a second one, and I would read it if she did!

I’m going to have to go with my gut on this one, and give the book 3 stars. I did enjoy it, just wished it was a little more smoothly written!

Content Ratings:

3. Mild action (common injuries with some details). 

2. Mild content (holding hands and mild kissing).

1. Infrequent substitute cursing (less than 10 "craps" etc. and/or book specific words). 

Other Trigger Warnings:

N/A

Our Reviews of Other Books by this author:

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