The premise of the book has great promise, it is the story of two women separated by more than a generation and a way of life. One is Violet who led a full life with a lot of pitfalls, and the other is Roni who has only had pitfalls and an occasional ray of sunshine. The entire book shows us how their meeting enhances Roni’s life, opens up new avenues for her and boost her self confidence.
When it comes to the plot premise, and the characters, they were uplifting and all the positive spins required to make a book interesting were present. There were some repetitive mentions which seemed to contradict each other. Mine was a review copy and hopefully, that would change in the published version. My biggest problem with the book was the character of Violet. Everyone loved her, she was shown as the most interesting person in any circle she travelled in, but I was unable to see why apart from her beauty. We were told a lot of things about her but I did not experience most of those things with the events provided. In Roni’s case, for example, her tending of people living in the care home indicated how patient she was and how she genuinely wanted to be of use to people just to make them feel better. Apart from Violet’s actions towards Roni, I was unable to gather the same sympathy for her. This discrepancy, as well as the final reveal, did not let me enjoy the book as I could have. The ‘uplit’ part of the tale got through to me and that is the only reason I liked it as much as I did. All in all, this was not the book for me but if other reviews and ratings are used as evidence, I am in the minority. I would recommend this to those people who like a dual timeline tale.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is completely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 