4.5 stars

Last summer I read this author’s The Friendship List and vowed to move her books up higher on my TBR list. I really enjoyed her storytelling. Well, here I am almost a year later and I still haven’t done that. Luckily, I was offered an ARC of this book as well as a spot on the blog tour. This book punched me in the gut and tugged at my heartstrings.

There is a whole lot to unpack in this book. This is the story of three sisters, but the narrative is from the point of view of only Daisy and Sage. We meet Cassidy, and even get a lot of her story, but this is really the tale of the two older siblings. Cassidy is the half sister to both Daisy and Sage while they are stepsisters. Daisy and Cassidy share a loving, boisterous, generous father. Sage and Cassidy share a greedy, needy, vindictive mother. Daisy and Sage were only living under the same roof for a few years, but they continued to go to school together after their parents divorced. Sage was the popular girl and made sure to use that popularity to keep Daisy down in the social standings at school. Daisy was the shy, smart girl who excelled at all she set her mind to.

These character descriptions are, of course, generalizations. There is so much more to all of these women. I found I sympathized with Daisy the most. She truly is a very good person. She’s kind and generous and hard working. Daisy is having marital problems that came as a surprise to her. But she’s determined to do her best and figure things out. Her husband is not very cooperative although he claims to want to work things out. I won’t give too much away, but Daisy’s husband is extremely frustrating and I often felt hatred for him. Yet I couldn’t help wondering if the author was throwing in some character bias since we were only seeing things from Daisy’s viewpoint and not his. I’ll let you learn what the truth is on your own here. Daisy also has kids at home which makes things even harder on her end. Throw in the fact that she is opening her home to an injured Cassidy, who she hasn’t spoken to in years and who is not very nice, and poor Daisy could really use a friend and some time to herself. How many directions can one person be pulled before they tear apart?

It’s harder to sympathize with Sage, but she’ll grow on you. She makes quite a few mistakes along the way, some of them major. Some that even made me wonder if she’d ever be redeemed. Sage is a very flawed human, yet she tends to learn her lesson each time she slides back into her old ways. From the outside, she has it all and has no remorse for any misdeeds. In truth, Sage is fighting tooth and nail to get people to respect her for what she’s accomplished and not just how she looks. It’s taken her a very long time to learn what’s important in life, she’s only hoping the lessons didn’t come too late.

The way the story unfolds between Daisy and Sage kept me engaged. The author did a beautiful job of building their relationship with each passing day. It’s not an easy thing to take two women with a lot of baggage with one another from enemies to civil to friends to sisters all in the span of one book. Susan Mallery not only achieved that feat, she did it seamlessly.

I found this story to be a reminder that there is so much more to people than what they allow us to see, no matter how close we are to them. We all have walls up in some way or another. To see these women come together and reform their family in a way they never would have imagined was possible was inspiring, heartbreaking, and extraordinary.

**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**

You can read an excerpt from this book on my blog, All In Good Time.

Strong Character Study With Maybe Not Quite Enough Introspection. This is one of those strong women-bonding-as-character-study type books where we get to see three very different women thrown together as a result of a family that blended and then dissolved years ago, and how that blending and dissolution affected all of them and even their common parents (one step father, one stepmother, both of whom combine to be the natural parents of the third sister). As someone who has a cousin that is actually in the exact position of the third sister - both parents having been previously divorced and having kids from those marriages - this was particularly interesting. As with the other Mallery book I've read so far, she does excellent work keeping things mostly realistic, and really my only fault here - potentially intentional, as it is still a realistic scenario - is that one of the three sisters perhaps doesn't look into herself as deeply as the other two do. Ultimately an engaging and satisfying book, this is thus very much recommended.

I was enjoying the story until it hit one of my hard no’s. YMMV