When Paul tells Iris he wants to end their sixteen year marriage, she's devastated.
They have been growing apart for sometime, but the reality is
painful. Iris is barely able to cope, and her household is in chaos.
When she receives a postcard from her sister Leah, who is getting
married, asking her to come home and help prepare for the wedding,
Iris decides to go. She needs time apart from Paul and the children to
come to terms with her situation.
Iris has always been
the good girl; Leah, the adventurous one. Now Iris has her own
problems, and Leah is getting married to a wonderful man. The sisters
have always been rivals and now they are having trouble becoming
close. Iris has a particularly difficult time as she thinks Leah
has everything she wants. As the novel progresses, the sisters bridge
their differences and a bond of sisterhood begins to emerge.
I felt the opening
of the novel was so fraught with Iris falling apart that it was
almost unrealistic. Too much time was spent showing how much of a
mess she was. However, when the story moves to the produce farm her
parents own on a beautiful lake, the story picks up.
I couldn't warm up
to Iris. I felt she was too needy and couldn't seem to stop making
clumsy mistakes. Leah was a more interesting character. She was an
independent woman who lived her life the way she wanted, but
underneath there is a fragility that is appealing. It makes you want
to find out what her problem is.
While the female
characters were well fleshed out, I thought the male characters were
too stereotypical and perfect. We hardly see Paul, but he's the
typical self-absorbed male. Cooper, Iris' high school crush who she
has a summer romance with, is patient and caring, almost too good to
be true. Stephen, Leah's fiance, is also the perfect man.
The best part of the
book was the setting. The produce farm owned by Iris' parents is on a
beautiful lake that seems to hold Iris and Leah's family together. I
could feel summer in the descriptions.
This is a good
story, not predictable, so it holds your attention. My only
disappointment was in the characters.
I reviewed this book
for Net Galley.
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