Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Fiction

The power of words to heal: Review of Things Left Unsaid by Courtney Walsh

She’s done it again. Courtney Walsh has set a deeply moving story in the tourist town of Sweethaven and not only did I love this story but now I want to go back and re-read the other Sweethaven stories she’s written! (To read about her other Sweethaven novels, you can check out my reviews here, here and here.)

Things Left Unsaid brings us a new set of characters and a story that is full of tension, and Courtney delivers the story with grace and excellence. I could feel the weight of what the characters carried.

In Things Left Unsaid, nearly every character is living with a burden that could be lifted or lightened by speaking words aloud. Some have been holding their feelings and the truth inside for a decade. A wedding and a celebration of life for a tragedy that happened 10 years ago brings all the characters together again in Sweethaven, and since so many of the burdens are related to the night their friend and daughter died, the words they won’t say hover over them like a cloud.

Throughout the story, the burdens and secrets are hinted at, and I kind of enjoyed being in the dark about the specifics until the very end.

While the story started out a little bit slow for me, mostly because I was reorienting myself to Sweethaven, by about one-third of the way through, I couldn’t put it down. I think that’s about the time all the characters came together in Sweethaven. The tension built and I kept turning the pages to find out what would happen.

Things Left Unsaid is such a powerful reminder of the importance of saying things out loud when we’re carrying burdens and secrets and how much freedom we can find when that happens.

Disclosure: I read an advanced copy of the book. Review reflects my honest opinion.

Redefining ‘happy endings’: Review of You Were Always Mine by Nicole Baart

Here’s what I know when I pick up a book by Nicole Baart:

  1. I’ll need to clear my calendar so I can read because her stories are hard to put down.
  2. It won’t be an “easy” read.
  3. The ending will make me feel a deep satisfaction, even if the resolution isn’t what I usually think of as “happily ever after.”

Her new book, You Were Always Mine, delivers on these three expectations.

The story centers on Jessica Chamberlain, who is newly separated from her husband and trying to hold the remaining pieces of her family together parenting her two sons. When she learns of an out-of-state tragedy that affects her family, she begins a search for answers to questions she didn’t know she had. And the questions start to point back to her 7-year-old adopted son.

I’d call this a light suspense. It’s not terrifying or impossible to read at night, but it keeps you turning the pages to figure out just what in the world is going on. (According to the publisher, if you like Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult, you’ll love this book!)

All I can tell you is I love everything I’ve ever read from Nicole Baart. (Her book Sleeping in Eden is on my top 10 list of favorite books of all time. If I had such a list!) Five stars, six stars, a million stars … none of them are enough praise for the way Baart wtites a story. She redefines what a happy ending means, giving her characters hopeful and redemptive endings that aren’t necessarily prettily tied up with a bow. That’s real life and she captures the tension between beautiful and broken so well.

Disclosure: I read an advance copy of the book courtesy of Atria Publishing. Review reflects my honest opinion.