This was a book club selection, that I did like, even though it is probably not something I would have picked out on my own. Family is always complicated, and I loved how this was dealt with in a southern setting. The author was born and raised in Mobile, AL and lives outside Birmingham. She also writes a monthly newspaper column about life, faith, and how funny (and hard) it is to be a parent.
After her last remaining family member dies, Sara Jenkins goes home to The Hideaway, her grandmother Mags’s ramshackle B&B in Sweet Bay, Alabama. She intends to quickly tie up loose ends then return to her busy life and thriving antique shop in New Orleans. Instead, she learns Mags has willed The Hideaway to her and charged her with renovating it — no small task considering her grandmother’s best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there.
Rather than hurrying back to New Orleans, Sara stays in Sweet Bay and begins the biggest house-rehabbing project of her career. Amid drywall dust, old memories, and a charming contractor, she discovers that slipping back into life at The Hideaway is easier than she expected.
Then she discovers a box Mags left in the attic with clues to a life Sara never imagined for her grandmother. With help from Mags’s friends, Sara begins to piece together the mysterious life of bravery, passion, and choices that changed her grandmother’s destiny in both marvelous and devastating ways.
When an opportunistic land developer threatens to seize The Hideaway, Sara is forced to make a choice — stay in Sweet Bay and fight for the house and the people she’s grown to love or leave again and return to her successful but solitary life in New Orleans.
The author does a good job of creating the world that is The Hideaway, and the setting is truly my favorite part of the book. The characters are interesting and she does a good job in weaving together the two story lines between past and present.
It was not a deep reading experience, but enjoyable nonetheless.
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