Thank you Eileen for sending an ARC of Once in a Blue Moon. It was a pleasant surprise to receive a copy, I so enjoyed The Diary.Eileen Goudge has written 17 novels. I encourage you to visit her website, it’s filled with great content. Here’s a sample (the last line of her Biography): Yes, happy endings do exist, in life as well as in fiction. There's only one catch: You have to write them for yourself. I wish every one of you success in making your own dreams come true.
This book is about two sisters separated for thirty years. The first part of this book sets up the story nicely, their mother is living on the edge leaving Lindsay to take care of her younger sister. Your heart breaks for these girls. They are placed into different homes within the foster care system and do not see each other for thirty years.
To spice up the story, one sister is on the right track and might be a bit ordinary while the other sister has followed their birth mothers steps. The novel explores the building of a relationship, the family and friends surrounding the sisters and the decisions they make as they try to get to know each other. This is a nice story with family dynamics and a story plot. I would compare this book to a Barbara Delinsky selection.
Type: Fiction, 336 pages, Hardcover
Synopsis:
Lindsay and Kerrie Ann are sisters who have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls’ mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care.
Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister. The owner of a bookstore in the sleepy California seaside town of Blue Moon Bay, she was lucky enough to have been adopted by a loving couple. Unbeknownst to her, Kerrie Ann has suffered a very different life. Bounced from one foster home to the next, she ran away as a teenager before becoming a drug-addicted single mother. Now, newly sober, Kerrie Ann is fighting to regain custody of the little girl who was taken from her.
Neither sister’s expectations are met when they’re finally reunited. But as the two sisters engage in the fiercest battles of their lives, they are at last drawn together despite their differences, restoring belief in the unshakable bond of family.