Publisher: Red Door
Publication Date: 13th September 2018
I received an email from Red Door Publishing detailing a couple of upcoming blog tours and this one was the one that sounded most interesting to me so I said sign me up!
How We Remember tells the story of Jo. A middle aged woman who has been forced to return to her hometown in the states after her mother dies.
She has to leave her husband and job in a London university behind and return home to help her father and brother arrange the funeral and also of course attend the funeral and pay her last respects and say her goodbyes to her mother.
Returning home to the place she grew up, Jo not only has to deal with the sadness and heartache of losing her mother but she is also faced with a tumult of overwhelming emotions and has to confront events from her past that she wanted to bury.
She has to deal with the long buried feelings of being sexually assaulted by her uncle and how that was dealt with by her aunt and mother at the time.
She also is thrown back into the midst of her troubled brothers issues and her fathers issues too. Things she thought she had left behind when she took a job in London and started building a new life for herself far away from her stifling small town American life.
This story for me is best categorised as a family drama. I enjoy seeing how people develop into the adults they are today based on the events that shape them as children or young adults (and Jo is most certainly shaped by hers).
Some of the subject content is hard to read but not at all gratuitous and kept firmly in keeping with the tone of the story. I was happy with the pace and the flashback chapters, detailing Jo’s formative years.
If you enjoy a slow burner of a family saga then this is the book for you.
Thanks to Anna at Red Door for the advanced copy.
See you soon.
Bookish Chat xx
Bookish Chat 