My First Trade Review: In Booklist!

So gratified to have this wonderful review in Booklist, the American Library Association's review publication, which for more than a hundred years has provided such an invaluable service to libraries and readers.

Hume’s debut follows three generations of Demarest women against the backdrop of an upscale summer community on the Maine coast. Minnesota native Maren Larsen meets Dr. Oliver Demarest while working as a wartime nurse at Walter Reed Hospital in 1944. But even after they’re married, she feels like an outsider among his blue blood family, especially during summers in Haven Point. During the tumultuous 1970s, Maren’s daughter Annie comes of age in the community’s embrace, but when tragedy strikes, she vows never to return. Annie’s daughter Skye views Haven Point as narrow-minded and elitist, but she ends up reluctantly finding refuge there in 2008 as she grieves for her mother, whose inner demons got the best of her. In chapters that alternate among time frames, Hume explores one family’s relationship with a tight-knit community that is insular and exclusive but also fiercely protective of those who inhabit it. Fans of Elin Hilderbrand and Beatriz Williams will appreciate this sweeping, multigenerational family story.

— Lindsay Harmon