Publication Information:
Mira, Trade Paperback, January 2014
Genre: Fiction

Plot: Two lonely people who
have suffered great loss come together when handsome, bestselling author Will
Shepard comes to North Carolina to see his ailing father, Jacob who has been kicked
out of a nursing home. A volunteer art
therapist from the facility suggests Will and Jacob rent the guest house of her
friend, Hannah Linden, so they can work out Jacob’s future. Hannah, a vet, has lost her parents and her husband
(who left her for a male graduate student) and her older son has been
hospitalized for depression. Will’s
situation is even worse: his five year old recently died in a car crash but
because Jacob’s memory is failing Will is caught pretending the child is on an
extended vacation. Inevitably, Will and
Hannah become friends but where can this relationship go when Hannah believes things happen for a reason and Will simply
can’t face anything that reminds him of his son - will these conflicting mindsets, not to
mention a significant age difference, keep them apart?
What I liked: The author does a
wonderful job depicting even minor characters, such as the condescending
director of Hawk’s Ridge Retirement Community.
While I found Hannah’s sons very tedious, I really liked her friend
Poppy whose kindness to Will’s father sets everything in motion and whose
flamboyant style lightens the darkness permeating the book. Jacob’s intermittent dementia and love of
his family is very familiar to anyone who has dealt with such situations. The author’s love of nature shines through in
this story and had me regretting that I was too busy studying when in graduate
school at Duke to explore the state.
What I disliked: The shifting point of view from various
characters was distracting, although it provided insight into what they are
thinking. I did not care for the way
Will calls his father ‘the old man’ all the time but one of the things Hannah
and Poppy teach him is to be more respectful and to gain understanding of what
his father when through with Will’s erratic mother.
The Title: Another thirty
minutes and darkness would fall, but right now the house and the cottage were
suspended between day and night, caught in that moment when nothing was defined
and everything seemed possible. Galen
had written several poems about the gloaming, and she often found herself out
in the woods with her camera at this time.
The French called it the blue hour; photographers called it the golden
hour; Hannah called it the in-between hour.
It spoke of endings and beginnings.
And today, it spoke of promise for a better tomorrow.
Source: I received this book from TLC Book Tours and
you can visit other stops on Barbara's tour listed below to get different perspectives. TLC is providing a copy for me to give
away (US only) so please leave a comment if you'd like it! If there's more than one request, I will do a
lottery.