The New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde is heartfelt and perceptive in this bittersweet story about slowing down and discovering what can be gained when leaving everything behind.Roseanna Chaldecott spent her life as a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan. But when her best friend and law partner dies suddenly, something snaps. Unsure of her future, Roseanna heads upstate on one … heads upstate on one tank of gas and with no plans to return.
In the foothills of the Adirondacks, Roseanna discovers the perfect hideout in a ramshackle farm. Its seventy-six acres are rich with possibilities and full of surprises, including a mother and daughter squatting on the property. Although company is the last thing Roseanna wants, she reluctantly lets them stay.
Roseanna and the young girl begin sculpting junk found around the farm into zoo animals, drawing more newcomers—including her estranged son, Lance. He pleads with Roseanna to return to the city, but she’s finally discovered where she belongs. It may not provide the solitude she originally sought, but her heart has found room for much more.
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If I start a book and it does not grab me, I don’t finish it. This one had me from page one to the end. Great writer.
I think this is my favorite of Ms. Jyde’s novels; like her other works, this has a well-developed, realistic plot and many memorable and likeable characters. As always, her work is thought-provoking, and considers the human experience from a compassionate perspective. Absolutely wonderful!
Catherine Ryan Hyde writes the most interesting novels! This story is unlike anything else she has done! It was entertaining and even very funny in places. Well done, Ms. Hyde!
I usually love her books but this one lacked a connection to the characters and a lot endless repetitive chatter
I have to admit that I’m never disappointed in any book that I have read by Catherine Ryan Hyde, and wasn’t this time either. Wonderful characters, and a nice dog and even a horse.
Roseanna is a Manhattan lawyer, who calls into her office, informs her assistant that she isn’t coming in, gets into her Maserati and heads out of town. She ends up in a rural area, sees a rundown shack and decides to stay.
Thus her life changes, as she tries to seek the quiet and solitude that she desperately seeks, as she encounters unwelcome squatters, campers and her distant son Lance.
It’s a journey in search of a simpler lifestyle, solitude and the freedom to throw off her trappings as a successful lawyer. Through the ups and downs of life’s complications, she learns that noise can be comforting, she can survive without a Maserati, squatters can become family and she can repair her fractured relationship with her son. Oh, and she could love a dog and horse, before she knew they belonged to her. A wonderful read. Loved it!
How much is enough? Is life passing you by while you are working to get to the next level? So many put off so much, thinking they will get to it when they retire. They save, but forget to enjoy and experience life every day.
This novel has resonated with me and continues to sit in my mind. I absolutely loved it and hated putting it down when life intruded, though I had to remember that every day is important. Catherine Ryan Hyde did such an amazing job creating characters and a story that really makes you rethink life: where you are, where you are going…and mostly what is REALLY important to you in life.
I loved the characters! Inspiring story!
My first book from this author. I really enjoyed her way of writing. The way she told the storyline gives you some serious things to consider in our own lives. The main character in this book was on a life changing journey, deciding what she wants out of her life. I would definitely recommend this book to others
This was a book that will certainly make you stop and think about life. Losing a best friend can do crazy things to a person. Or maybe it’s not crazy but more like making you wake up and see what you have and what you truly want.
Roseanna was a high powered attorney who had it all. Her own law practice with her best friend a nice apartment overlooking a park and a car that was to die for. But when her friend and partner die she starts looking at life a bit differently. She gets in her car and leaves. She has no real plan but once she gets there she knows it is the place for her. A nice piece of land with a small shack of a house and a few other buildings. She buys it and intends to spend her life alone there. But there are other people who live there and she becomes friends with them. No one, not even her son, Lance, can get her to come back to the city. He stays with her and they finally start talking and become much closer.
This is a good story that will keep you wanting more. Even after the last page I was not ready to let it go. It’s a story that will make you fall in love with people again. Some tears are mixed in and some laughter. The kind of story that you will love reading.
Catherine Ryan Hyde is a great story teller. I look forward to more of her awesome books.
I received a copy of this via @NetGalley #Lake Union
I’ve read most of Catherine Ryan Hyde novels and this one was not as fleshed out character wise. I was disappointed as she is one of my favorite authors. It was readable but not up to her best efforts.
We meet Roseanna, a woman who makes metal sculptures of animals. A reporter from the New York Times about her sculptures. She asks the reporter not to mention her location but her son, Lance finds her. He gets upset at the fact that she’s living with five people and a dog. This book kept me on my toes and I absolutely loved it.
This was my first book by Ms. Hyde. I can’t wait to read another
Another wonderful story by this author, her books always have great messages to relay.
This story about a high-powered attorney, Roseanna Chaldecott, whom after her best friend and fellow law partner dies unexpectedly, runs from responsibility and goes from NYC, to a remote area of NY state where she falls in love with the solitude, and where she feels, what she left behind will not find her, even her own son.
The author always has a way of creating fascinating characters, who all come together to complete a whole.
We see the main character go through great changes and realizations, as she decides to take on this new life. The life she is escaping from, and her new one collide, and she her son, ex office people and all of the new found characters in the book, need to see how they can make a difference in each others lives.
This was a great read and one that we can all benefit from.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of this book
Even at my age I sometimes think that death is something that happens to other people. It’s easy to do. So I sync’d with this book.
Rosanna’s best friend Alice died suddenly. Unexpectedly. Two years before the retirement Alice been looking forward to her whole working life.
That death turns Rosanna’s world upside down and sends her in search of a new life path. One that includes all the things she’d planned to enjoy someday. Peace. Solitude. Well, that part doesn’t work out. The solitude. But I love the characters that invade her life. I love who she becomes. I love her wry humor.
Catherine Ryan Hyde’s style is as cool and clear as a summer morning. I hated having to put the book down even for a second.
I was given an ARC of this book in return for a fair review. And I am grateful for the opportunity to read and review it.
Heaven Adjacent is a deceptively simply constructed, but beautifully told latest book from the talented Catherine Ryan Hyde. It is the story of Roseanna Chaldecott, a driven, successful Manhattan lawyer who spent decades practicing law with her best friend, Alice. But one morning, Roseanna simply cannot go to the office so she calls her office and notifies her secretary that she will not be coming in, gets into her Maserati, and starts driving. She ends up lost in the foggy foothills of the Adirondacks where she spies a seventy-six acre dilapidated farm for sale. The main house is in disrepair, but does offer a few pieces of furniture, as well as a functioning bathroom and kitchen. It is in better shape that the guesthouse in which Roseanna soon discovers a mother and her five-year-old daughter are residing. Roseanna’s introduction to Patty and little Willa provides the first clue as to the depth of Roseanna’s story. After that heartbreaking beginning, Roseanna goes about settling into her new home.
Roseanna soon learns that the rundown barn is actually a warehouse full of scrap metal. Only the deceased former owner,. Macy, knew why she collected it. But little Willa comes up with the idea of fashioning it into sculptures of animals. Before long Roseanna learns to weld and the metal menagerie continues growing.
Roseanna escaped New York City to find solitude, quiet, and be alone. But despite her best efforts, she manages to attract squatters — homeless, down-on-their-luck folks who need a place to lay their heads — and is largely unable to evict them. And the farm is full of the noises of life — a squealing little girl, a rambunctious dog, and even an elderly horse!
But is the noise a reporter for the New York Times makes that disrupts Roseanna’s new life. His story on her increasingly famous metal sculptures lead not just her former law partner, Jerry, to her, but also her thirty-year-old son, Lance, with whom Roseanna has always had a tempestuous relationship.
Heaven Adjacent is populated by a case of quirky characters that keep the story interesting and entertaining, But in the skilled hands of Catherine Ryan Hyde, the tale is an exploration of relationships, priorities, emotional openness, and family. It is a look at values and how each individual must determine what matters most to him/her and how he/she wants to spend his/her days. It is a study in second chances, reconciliation, and living a life that has meaning and finally finding a home.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.
This was a really good book. It actually had me thinking about things personally. I enjoyed Roseanna’s character and really loved how she had the strength to just “run away” from home under such devastating circumstances. Of course she also had the financial ability to do that. I think the best part of the story is how she found her “heaven”. In this tragedy Roseanna was able to open her heart to her son and built a new relationship with him. As well as those who inhabited her land.
“Maybe everything deteriorates in time, and maybe that doesn’t make it any less worth having it while it lasts.”
This is a novel that many need to read and really look at the message given.
A brilliant book that I actually felt I was living in. The details of the land and the feelings of each character described was amazing.
Rosanna- a NYC attorney gets into her car one morning after losing her “best friend” who dies suddenly, and drives until she runs out of gas. She finds herself in a small country town and decides then and there, that she has had enough of the pressures and noise in her life.
She moves into a tiny rundown cabin on a large piece of property. She finds a whole new world, relationships and happiness that she never had embraced before. It wasn’t easy lessons to lear, until she accepted and opened her heart.
Definitely a terrific story!
This is my first Catherine Ryan Hyde book. The main character, Roseanna, was a successful lawyer in a law firm with her best friend Alice and another partner Jerry. Everything changes one day when Alice has a stroke or embolism and passes away. Roseanna runs away and ends up in a little place in upstate New York and buys a piece of land with a dilapidated tiny farm house. This piece of property comes with several squatters. This is a story of reinventing one’s self, learning what is important in life, and finding family in a group of strangers. Many times this book reminded me of A Man Called Ove. Very slow moving but a heart felt story.
While Pay It Forward is one of my favorite movies, reading Allie And Bea shattered my mind, so it was no wonder I nearly jumped from joy when this book landed in my hands. And once again, I am sitting here, humbled and in awe by a brilliant story, the clever plotting, and the characters whom will stay with me, destinies and lives that touched my heart, life-lessons that had a profound impact on me. Such an inspiring, uplifting, real, and raw story about life, priorities, relationships, family, and friends.
At first, I wondered why the timeline was chopped up and the story went back and forth within three to four years, but as the story unfolds, it all starts to make sense, and I turned to appreciate it being presented as it was, so I could understand the nuances and tones of the events.
Roseanna Chaldecott’s struggle to find peace, to realize her true life goals, her needs, the bare necessities she needed to be happy, and the priorities she would and could set in her life, is a journey and a battle that will make the reader evaluate and ponder on their own life as well, if they allow the story to touch their minds and hearts.
Her relationships have always been distant, keeping people at the arm’s length, even her son. The patching of the most important connection in her life, to Lance, while finding her true self, was eye-opening and inspiring. The story shows repeatedly, how people are capable of change, or refind themselves when the core values are recognized and set in place.
What do you really need to be happy? How much material things do you really need to live a satisfying life? Are things, success, being right, winning the argument, being the best more important than inner peace, meaningful relationships, deep connection to the people surrounding you? Contentment, joy, and peace of mind, or being busy, dealing, and wheeling through life?
Each one of the cast and crew in the book contributes with their unique stories, their unique way of life and living, their character, highlighting some of the major characteristics in most of us.
This story gives hope, it encourages to look deep inside and embrace what you find. It reassures that there is still goodness in people, it cheers you to re-define what makes you satisfied in life, what family means to you, and how happiness is not tight to the material possessions.
If read with an open mind, this heartening story just might change your way of thinking or at least give you a new aspect to the outlook of life.
~ Five Spoons!
Roseanna wakes up one morning, after the death of her best friend, and decide she has had enough of being a lawyer and city living. She drives until she runs out of gas. She finds herself in a very small town and finds an amazing property up for sale and on a whim buys it. She has found her Heaven. Add in some quirky squatters and some funny animals and Roseanna is home. I loved Roseanna. Her relationship with her son Lance is very flawed and they both work on making it better when Lance comes to stay with her. The characters in the story are flawed, honest, and real. They will stay with me for a very long time. I received an advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing. All opinions are my own.