Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Puzzle Bark Tree by Stephanie Gertler

The Puzzle Bark Tree by Stephanie Gertler
Literature/Fiction


Grace Hammond and her sister Melanie grew up in a home with very little emotion. Their mother would sit for days on end in her room, not talking to her children. Their father was a busy lawyer and spent most of his time at home consoling his wife. Grace and Melanie grew to love their housekeeper, Jemma, like a mother.
When Grace and Melanie are grown up, they make a tradition of seeing their parents during the Christmas holiday. Jemma decides to head to the Hammond household a couple days before Christmas to help them get ready but makes a shocking discovery. They are both sitting in their bed, dead. When the will is read, Grace discovers that her parents left her a house on an island that she never knew her parents had.
Grace tries to cope with finding out why her parents lived as they did, why she never knew about this island, reoccurring dreams of her and her sister drowning, and a very emotionally detached husband.
This book really brings you in to the characters' lives. Though it is fairly easy to discover the Hammond's secret past, you want to find out why and how. This story is about grief and loss, but there are moments of happiness and finding true love that makes the book as much of a non-genre as it does a romance. The romance isn't cheesy like typical romance books, but quite beautiful.
This book gets your attention at page one and you will have troubles putting it down. This really is a great book! One of the better one's I've read in the past couple of months.


Where this book was before me: Denver, Colorado -> Me!


Rating:

(4.5/5)

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