I choose this book on netgalley.com because I love books where past and present are strongly connected, where there are letters, journals able to "speak" at the present and where there is an intriguing story behind.
I knew that I wouldn't have been deluded. My expectations completely satisfied.
The cover is simply amazing, the reading wonderfully intense and gratifying.
This book will cuddle you, if you are a woman letting you discover the best sides of life.
Taking time for ourselves first of all. Long baths, warm teas able to comfort body and soul, good and quality sleeping-time, great food, traveling, our wonderful Italy (and Paris, France) one of the places favorite by the author for her protagonists, a good house where to stay in peace, the power of memories thanks to letters, journals and pictures left by Ancestors, the love of Lord, friends, a man in love able to wait.
It's a precious book. A book of women. Independent women, lucky women, women who lived a lot, women who discovered a diversified and sometimes also rich world and that at the end returned in a more little dimension remembering that the real richness is not "into" the power of money but in the power of little things, love, family, friends. It's a book where all these women, the ones of the past and CJ the protagonist, were and are strongly independent. The desire of explore the world, the desire of not settling down with simplicity, or maybe yes, but with Mr.Right as it happened with the first and second husband of the great grand mother of CJ one of the main treats of their character.
The story starts with CJ at Los Angeles. Wonderful life, beautiful and stunning fiance, good work. We find the girl all busy. She is organizing her wedding. CJ has the life everyone wants. She lives in a multi-cultural and exciting city, plenty of friends, with a fiance she loves, soon her husband. She couldn't be more happy.
But maybe God has other plans for her. Yes because something is going on wrong.
One day Bryan, his fiance, accompanied by another beautiful creature, at just less than a week from the great event confess her: "I married this girl. Today"
"Ops...Ahem...Wow...Did I lose something in the while?" maybe the thoughts of CJ...
Astonished CJ's life turned upside down. She thought that a new and maybe definitive chapter would have been written with this marriage and now she is alone. Alone with herself and her thoughts.
When she discovers her granny is dead she returns at her granny's home.
Wonderful to see again all her old friends although at first her style and "character" pretty aggressive, she had forgotten the lazy times of a countryside and a little reality.
Married and with children most of her friends at the town remembers her with great love and they start to stop by at her house for bringing food and re-starting a new friendship. Everyone knew of her return. In little realities it's impossible to keep a secret.
While CJ is trying to recuperate thanks to good intense sleeping time, long baths, great sweet tea, cookies, good food her relationship with reality, she re-discovers Sam as well. Sam the most important boy of her teen-age age. She loved him.
And Sam although of course in the while wrote important pages in his own life, is absolutely interested to start a very important chapter of his life with CJ.
Very soon CJ discovers that her old granny Anne left all her patrimony to her. Not just the house where she is recovering after the big stress of being abandoned by Bryan.
Apart the money left by her granny, a lot, CJ finds some letters left by her granny. Anne wrote her these letters for explaining why she had chosen her and not her mother and for telling her something more or her past life.
Plus, granny Anne added also the precious journals 8they start from 1909) of her great grand mother, for a complete portrait of this women and family.
CJ starts to understands that her granny Anne before to become a tranquil lady of a tranquil town traveled a lot, discovered the world, had had a lot of men (unbelievable for CJ) who loved her and some of them left her a fortune.
Her great grand mother more unlucky, spent a life surrounded by various disgraces but making at the same time interesting experiencing. Both of these ladies of the past in love for a reason or another, work, pleasure, for traveling.
CJ starts to be confused reading these letters because she doesn't know what to do. A quick return to Los Angeles, rich and without too many thoughts, or spending the rest of her life in a tranquil place?
Does she want to travel like her ancestors? What does she want from life? Sam or more excitement?
She still doesn't know. But she knows for sure that people of her town adores her, and Lord will be back for trying to help her to find her way in this world.
An important thematic the book put in evidence is the importance of richness when shared with others and the importance of work.
Lord is everywhere. In little actions, in inspired actions.Lord is everywhere and doesn't abandon anyone.
I strongly suggest this book to everyone because it is written with great love. Readers will feel a lot of warm. They will be wrapped up only by good feelings, and they will feel the sensation of being loved always loved by life and Lord in an optimistic book plenty of good values, and great memories.
Anna Maria Polidori
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