It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward's husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news -- Cal's family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal's reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt. Charting the course of an uncertain life -- and feeling guilt from her husband's tragic death -- Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cal's unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of the ancestral Heyward home on the Bluff. This unknown legacy, now Merritt's, will change and define her as she navigates her new life -- a new life complicated by the arrival of her too-young stepmother and ten-year-old half-brother. Soon, in this house of strangers, Merritt is forced into unraveling the Heyward family past as she faces her own fears and finds the healing she needs in the salt air of the Low Country.
Well I will start by saying that my favorite character in the book was Loralee, larger than life, full of "truths" that she writes down in a pink journal. Okay now my least favorite character was Merritt, now I did eventually grow to like her but she was very sour on life at first. I guess compared to Loralee's big-hearted ways (and not to mention hair) it was hard for me to relate to Merritt's closed off judgmental ways in the beginning of the book. Now I know a sign of a very good book for me is when I take the character's actions personally! I loved the setting of the book, Beaufort S.C. and the way the author describes the house and the surrounding marsh land.The fact that there was a bit of a mystery to the story appealed to me as well. The story brings to light the legacy of domestic violence and how it can affect each generation for many years, this can be a hard topic to write and read about but very necessary to bring it out in the open more.
The end part of the book has one or two surprises. Well to wrap it up, I enjoyed this book and had a hard time letting the place and the characters go when I finished the book.This review was originally posted on
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13 April, 2016:
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