Item: Keep Me Afloat
Rating: 5.00
Author: bookanonjeff

by Jennifer Gold

From the author of The Ingredients of Us comes a moving story about true love and heartbreak, mistakes and redemption, forgiveness and second chances.

Five years ago, marine biologist Abby Fisher made a mistake that cost her everything. Rather than face the consequences, she fled home to start anew—and built the career she’d always dreamed of. But when her research program runs out of funding, she’s adrift once again and decides to return to the safe harbor of her family and friends.

Except nothing at home is how she remembered.

Her friendships are strained, her normally affectionate parents seem distant, and her once-great love story is now just a painful memory. What’s worse, she keeps running into the people she hurt years ago—and they aren’t ready to forgive her.

Abby is determined to atone for her mistakes, but she can’t seem to move beyond her guilt for a chance of future happiness. Can Abby learn to sail through the storm, or will she remain lost at sea?

Poignant and heartfelt, Keep Me Afloat asks the question: How can you expect forgiveness from others if you can’t even forgive yourself?

Excellent Sophomore Effort. In this followup to 2019's The Ingredients of Us, Gold does an excellent job of telling a serious tale of a woman struggling to learn to forgive herself while managing to keep the overall tone hopeful. Once again she plays around with using dates as chapter names, which is an interesting construct. Unlike Ingredients, this one uses a more month to month structure, with flashbacks to the same few years prior as events from those periods are revealed. This is also the second book where the lead, as it turns out, is childfree - and still Gold doesn't actually use that term in the book itself. Overall truly a remarkable effort that shows Gold's growth as a writer and storyteller. Very much recommended.

Keep Me Afloat

by Jennifer Gold

Reviewed by Jeff Sexton on Feb 23, 2020

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