BOOK BY: Pepper Basham
A beautiful narrative of how stories can help mend the broken parts of our past and provide a foundation for our future.
Contemporary heroine Clara Blackwell inherits the one hundred year old family Bookshop in Asheville, NC. There’s a question of ownership that sends Clara, her mother and cousin Robbie on a search for a missing deed, before her smarmy Uncle’s client can file a lawsuit against her.
Historical heroine Sadie Blackwell is the resident librarian for the Vanderbilt’s estate. She has a gift for bringing books alive and for choosing the exact one that a patron of the estate’s personal collection requires. A whirlwind romance, an adventure across the ocean and a tragedy from WW1 creates a trail of letters, hidden missives in books and locked away documents that will either prove or disprove the true identity of Blackwell’s Book Shop one hundred years later.
There are interesting characters and sweet romances that play through both the contemporary and historical time lines. Readers will cheer Clara on as she digs through the dusty boxes left untouched for decades. Readers will boo the villains of Clara’s and Sadie’s stories. Readers will admire characters who rise above the adversity, and the ways in which they do it.
Though the ending is somewhat predictable, the slow romance in the contemporary line and the thrill of discovery is a delight. And our hero from Sadie’s story, is the kind of hero readers will swoon over.
I received an ecopy from the publisher through NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.