A bittersweet inheritance reunites three estranged sisters in a novel of family, trust, and forgiveness from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.When they were growing up, Dana, Harper, and Tawny thought of themselves as “sometimes sisters.” They connected only during the summer month they’d all spend at their grandmother’s rustic lakeside resort in north Texas. But secrets started … Texas. But secrets started building, and ten years have passed since they’ve all been together—in fact, they’ve rarely spoken, and it broke their grandmother’s heart.
Now she’s gone, leaving Annie’s Place to her granddaughters—twelve cabins, a small house, a café, a convenience store, and a lot of family memories. It’s where Dana, Harper, and Tawny once shared so many good times. They’ve returned, sharing only hidden regrets, a guarded mistrust, and haunting guilt. But now, in this healing summer place, the secrets that once drove them apart could bring them back together—especially when they discover that their grandmother may have been hiding something, too…
To overcome the past and find future happiness, these “sometimes sisters” have one more chance to realize they are always family.
An Amazon Charts bestseller.
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I got hooked on these characters and once the book was over I missed them.
This book “ hooked me “ from the first chapter. Highly emotional. Has romance but also a great story about family!
loved it!
I love this author and everything she writes.
Absolutely loved it!
Favorite Quotes:
Granny used to say that the person who stirs the shit pile has to lick the spoon.
He made it in eight minutes and would have arrived there sooner if he hadn’t gotten behind a pokey old woman who didn’t have any place to go and a year to get there.
Did you think it was all rainbows and unicorn farts after you left? The only thing that changed was that I got all the bitchin’ instead of sharin’ it with you.
You can do better… He’s not for you, Aunt Tawny. He’s got a cat and he lives with his mama.
She’d worn a white robe and the preacher said that she was leaving all her sins in the water and would be a new creature when she arose from it. At ten years old, she’d often wondered how the water felt holding the sins of so many people and where it went when the preacher pulled the plug and let it all go. Did it wash into the rivers, where the sin jumped on people as they swam?
She loved the sound of his soft drawl. Maybe she could take him home. He could sit beside her bed and read the phone book to her until she fell asleep.
My Review:
I enjoyed this cleverly paced small-town family drama that was packed with quirky characters, heart-squeezing histories, irreverent homespun wisdom, and amusing observations. Three grieving and desperate women arrived at a small-town Texas lake resort with each hoping for a chance at a fresh start in life. They had previously called themselves sometimes sisters, although they were actually three half-sisters who were only together one month each summer while staying at the rustic lake resort of with their much-loved grandmother, “Granny Annie.” Each was envious of the others but had never looked too deeply as nothing was as it had seemed.
But Granny Annie has just passed away, and the three women must return to run the resort together or get nothing at all, which posed quite the challenge, as they had not been successful in spending more than a few minutes together without an argument breaking out. Each arrived at the resort out of options, out of money, and weighted down with shameful secrets, regrets, and old resentments. Little did they know that Granny Annie had been keeping the biggest secret of them all. My favorite character was not one of the sisters but the elderly cook who had been known to them all their lives as Uncle Zed, I adored him, even if he was the cause of the first ugly cry I’ve sobbed out in years.
This book follows the lives of three estranged sisters as they work their way back to family. An inheritance of a lakeside resort, a café, and a bait shop along with a grandmother’s dying wish reunites these three sisters as they strive to work through the years of hurt, bitterness, resentment and anger and find their way to love, forgiveness and family. We get a look into each sister’s past and the secrets she carried to help us understand the reason behind the choices they each made and what has led them to this current place in their life. The resort is a crossroad for each of them as they struggle with past memories and pain to find their way back to happiness, love and the true bond of sisterhood. Learning to work together brings them closer as friends first, then sisters as they navigate the new choices before them. As they each begin to come to terms with their past and find their own peace, each sister is presented with the opportunity for a new love and a future of happiness and possibility. This is a wonderful story full of bittersweet memories, sadness, happiness, laughter and definitely some tears. A heartwarming read that will keep you interested until the end and rooting for the sisters to find their happy ending. *I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book and am providing my honest review.