This book is told from the perspectives of three women: Sarah, Connie, and Anna. Sarah is a London restaurant owner who leaves her husband (after the police start questioning her about his business practices) and returns to her family home to spend more time with her father. She ends up buying an old house to restore, which used to belong to Connie. Connie is the daughter of the former overseer of the old orphanage and has to sell the house after her sister dies and she hurts her leg. She’s forced to move into a nursing home and sell her house, but she is still terrified to break the promise she made to her late father to keep all his papers and things private from the world. Anna is a 28-year-old woman sent to live and marry in India after her father goes to jail, and we learn about her life through old journal entries.
This book gets off to a a slow start. I had to get past the first one-third of the book before I actually started to care what happened. But since I try to finish every book I start, I kept going, and I’m glad I did because it was a sweet story in the end. I especially liked the character of Anna, perhaps because she seemed slightly more developed as a full character compared to the other two women, and without giving anything away, the ending was sweet and sentimental, which in this case made the book worth reading.
I will note that I didn’t find the mystery parts very mysterious — I had already figured out all the sudden revelations a lot earlier in the book. And, some room for improvement is the way Sarah ended her marriage, which was slightly unbelievable — usually after a long marriage and business relationship, without any abuse, you’d have to talk to the person at some point to actually get a divorce. Also, Connie seemed to be a firecracker as a child, so her cowering and being so completely afraid of her (dead) father as an adult seems out of place.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from NetGalle and Bookouture in exchange for my honest review. It has not influenced my opinion.