When you lose the love of your life, how do you find yourself again?

For Tabitha, the day that changed everything started like any other.

She woke up, slid her feet into fluffy slippers, wrapped herself in a dressing gown and tiptoed out of her bedroom, leaving her husband Andy sleeping. Downstairs, she boiled the kettle and enjoyed a cup of tea as the sun rose.

Upstairs, Andy’s alarm sounded, and Tabitha took him a freshly brewed coffee, like every other morning.  Except today, the incessant beeping rang out and her husband hadn’t stirred. She called his name, she nudged his shoulder. But Andy wouldn’t wake up.

Three years later Tabitha is trying her hardest to get by in the shadow of her grief. She may have lost the love of her life but she won’t give up on the family they dreamed of. Fostering troublesome teenage girls and a newborn baby is a chance to piece together her broken heart.

But being a mother isn’t easy, and neither is healing the heartache she carries around. After losing everything, could saving these three children help Tabitha save herself too?

This stunning tale will make you laugh and cry in equal measure, hold your loved ones close and see the beauty in the little things in life. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult and Diane Chamberlain will love this moving and uplifting story.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She wished she could grab a handful of his ashes and scatter them in all the places they’d loved. She wished they were like seeds and in planting them, they’d bring him back. That in sowing them in the quarters of the world that they’d loved, she’d be able to capture moments as if they were happening all over again. That by bringing him back in that way she’d feel that she was being held by him once again and somehow his seed would settle inside her and they’d go on to have the family they’d dreamed of.

‘You don’t want to talk about it because it hurts. Some things are better left unsaid. Some things are better dealt with by eating ice cream.’ And just like that, Tabitha had been schooled by a fifteen-year-old. Because how could she argue with that.

My Review:

This was a slowly evolving and heart-squeezing women’s fiction tale of loss and family drama. This stubborn young widow must have lost her mind for taking on two obnoxious, challenging, and troubled fifteen-year-olds twins and a medically involved newborn as her first attempt at fostering children; in addition to living out in the middle of nowhere and without transportation. I would have needed a fully stocked wine cellar, bars on the windows, and an Uber and therapist on speed dial before even considering such an insane scheme. This was my introduction to the taut storytelling of Catherine Miller, and her angsty tale was thoughtfully and perceptively written with observant insights while teasing and poking at my curiosity as she doesn’t let us in on the actual events of the day that changed everything until 84% into the book, and by then, I had puzzled out the correct scenario that was, thankfully, far afield of my initial assumption.