📖 Blog Tour ~ A Letter from Nana Rose by Kristin Harper

 

Thrilled to host one of today's concluding stops on this blog tour

Bookouture
25 October 2021

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of the book
and to Sarah at Bookouture for the invitation to the blog tour

“My darling girls. You were once so happy in this house. Now I’m gone, all I ask is that you spend one last summer here together on Dune Island. And please forgive me, your Nana, for the secret I’m about to tell you…”

Arriving at the honeysuckle-covered beach house inherited from her beloved grandmother, recently heartbroken Jill hopes to convince her two feuding sisters not to sell a place so full of happy childhood memories. But the envelope waiting on the driftwood table changes everything. In her elegant handwriting, Nana Rose promises a new letter will arrive each day of the summer revealing a family secret she took to her grave.

Shaken, Jill anxiously awaits each letter filled with Nana’s bittersweet memories of her own sister who she loved more than anyone—and lost far too young. But why did Nana never speak of this tragic loss to her grandchildren?

Watching the sunset each night and wondering how well they really knew Nana Rose, Jill feels her family is closer than they’ve been in years. And after a chance encounter with blue-eyed tree surgeon Alex, she wonders if Nana believed being back on Dune Island would help Jill find love, too?

But when Nana’s final letter arrives, the revelation about how her sister died is more shocking than Jill ever imagined. Suddenly, despite the chance of happiness with Alex, selling the house seems the only way forward. Will Jill find a way to forge new bonds of sisterhood and save their inheritance, or will Nana Rose’s secret tear them all apart?

📖 My thoughts..

Grieving the loss of their beloved Nana Rose, Rachel, Brooke and Jill meet once again at Nana Rose's house on Dune Island, Massachusetts. Filled with happy memories of holidays, and family gatherings, the sisters have to make the momentous decision to either keep, or sell, the estate. It soon becomes obvious that each of the women have different viewpoints and during the ten days they spend at the cottage, Brooke, Rachel and Jill have some big decisions to make which is influenced by the arrival of a series of letters from Nana Rose.

The author takes us right into the heart and soul of the novel and with clever flashbacks we move forwards and backwards through time learning about the sisters, and Nana Rose, in the process. The sisters are a good mix of personalities, sometimes they're frosty towards each other and I smiled at the petty bickering which is so reminiscent of sibling rivalry. The touristy life on Dune Island is brought to life and I enjoyed how the author took us around the place, sampling food from The Clam Shack and delicious sounding almond croissants from the bakery. There's a warm hearted intimacy to the story which makes you feel close to the characters just as if you are settling in, with them, to watch the beauty of the bay and see sunset over Dune Island.

Finding the secrets of the past is the only way to go forwards and in this lovely story, we learn so much more about the sisters as they try to set aside their differences in order to come up with a decision which works for all of them, just as Nana Rose wanted them to do.

Beautifully written with a charming observational style, A Letter from Nana Rose is such a pleasure to read. 

About the Author

Ever since she was a young girl, there were few things Kristin liked more than creative writing and spending time on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, with her family. Eventually (after a succession of jobs that bored her to tears), she found a way to combine those two passions by becoming a women’s fiction author whose stories occur in oceanside settings. While Kristin doesn’t live on the Cape year-round, she escapes to the beach whenever she can.

Twitter @KHarperAuthor #ALetterFromNanaRose

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