Heirlooms

GIVEAWAY

BYRD, SANDRA

HEIRLOOMS

Answering a woman's desperate call for help, young Navy widow Helen Devries opens her Whidbey Island home as a refuge to Choi Eunhee. As they bong over common losses and a delicate, potentially devastating secret, their friendship spans the remainder of their lives.

After losing her mother, Cassidy Quinn spent her childhood summers with her gran, Helen, at her farmhouse. Nourished by her grandmother's love and encouragement, Cassidy discovers a passion that she hopes will bloom into a career. But after Helen passes, Cassidy learns that her home and garden have fallen into serious disrepair. Worse, a looming tax debt threatens her inheritance. Facing the loss of her legacy and in need of allies and ideas, Cassidy reaches out to Nick, her former love, despite the complicated emotions brought by having him back in her life.

Cassidy inherits not only the family home but a task, spoken with her grandmother's final breaths: ask Grace Kim -- Eunhee's granddaughter -- to help sort through the contents of the locked hope chest in the attic. As she and Grace dig into the past, they unearth their grandmothers' long-held secret and more. Each startling revelation reshapes their understanding of their grandmothers and ultimately inspires the courage to take risks and make changes to their own lives.

Set in both modern-day and midcentury Whidbey Island, Washington, this dual-narrative story of four women -- grandmothers and granddaughters -- intertwines across generations to explore the secrets we keep, the love we pass down, and the heirlooms we inherit from a well-lived life

My Review:

Some people cry at movies, I cry in books. My tender bibliophile heart gets all entangled in the lives of the characters and I'm a goner. I don't cry non-stop or with every book, but there are times when my eyes well up because I'm happy, sad, mad, relieved...but, I can honestly say I've never teared up from the sheer beauty and wisdom of a story until 'Heirlooms'.

And can I tell you why? Nope -- because that would involve spilling major spoilers. I'm not quite sure how to write this review, so here I are some random musings:

Two timelines brilliantly woven together -- and I love that we get chunks of one time period at a time, rather than bouncing back and forth between snippets of past and present. It helped me feel anchored in these stories and invested in the characters' lives.

And, oh, these characters! Helen in the 1950s and her granddaughter in present day -- the challenges they face, the legacy of love and faith...and the secrets borne out of social injustice in the past that finally get to see the light of day in the present and make a tremendous difference in the lives of the next generation.

The way both stories interweave, plot threads pulling tighter as the page count diminishes and then -- whoosh -- the expelling of anxious pent-up breath over the stupendous conclusion that rocked my bookish world and left me aching with so many emotions...and a copious amount of tears. Honestly, the crying took me by surprise but it was just the extraordinary way Byrd brings resolution and hope and so much promise for the future.

Of course, the gardening aspect was a huge draw for me -- so many parallels to life and faith in the growing of new things. The passion Helen develops and Cassidy inherits -- and the unification it brings to both their stories and their friends' stories. Because though told from Helen's and Cassidy's points of view, this is definitely Eunee's and Grace's story as well.

There's even a light romance in the present day timeline which made me all kinds of giddy (despite the angst at times.)

Utterly stunning and memorable. Definitely a book for the keeper shelf...or in my case the audible library shelf because I thoroughly enjoyed Melie William's narration. 

GIVEAWAY OPPORTUNITY:

This giveaway is for a paperback or ebook copy -- winner's choice

If you would like a chance to win a copy of  Heirlooms, leave a comment below or email me at kavluvstoreadATyahooDOTca. If you add an email to your comment, remember to use AT and DOT instead of @ and . in order to protect yourself from spammers. If you enter the draw via email, please add the title to the subject line so it's easy to spot your entry. Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday August 20 2022 . Offer open to International Readers. Good luck