Synopsis (from Barnes & Noble):
Thirteen-year-old Natalie Gallagher is trying to escape: from her parents' ugly divorce, and from the vicious cyber-bullying of her former best friend. Adrift, confused, she is a girl trying to find her way in a world that seems to either neglect or despise her. Her salvation arrives in an unlikely form: Bridget O'Connell, an Irish maid working for a wealthy Boston family. The catch? Bridget lives only in the pages of a dusty old 1920s diary Natalie unearthed in her mother's basement. But the life she describes is as troubling - and mysterious - as the one Natalie is trying to navigate herself, almost a century later.
I am writing this down because this is my story. There were only ever two people who knew my secret, and both are gone before me.
Who was Bridget, and what became of her?
Natalie escapes into the diary, eager to unlock its secrets, and reluctantly accepts the help of library archivist Kathleen Lynch, a widow with her own painful secret: she's estranged from her only daughter. Kathleen sees in Natalie traces of the daughter she has lost, and in Bridget, another spirited young woman at risk.
What could an Irish immigrant domestic servant from the 1920s teach them both? As the troubles of a very modern world close in around them, and Natalie's torments at school escalate, the faded pages of Bridget's journal unite the lonely girl and the unhappy widow - and might even change their lives forever.
My Thoughts:
I received this book as a GoodReads First Read - and I LOVED it. I enjoyed so many aspects of this book. The length was perfect - long enough for character development, but not so long that I got bored. The characters themselves were diverse and the situations realistic: a mother "losing" her daughter to drugs and the wrong crowd, a gay couple going through the international adoption process, a high school freshman being bullied and losing a best friend, a mother dealing with depression after a failed marriage, and to top it all off the scandalous story of a distant relative who no one even knew existed until finding a very old notebook buried in a basement.
I thought the resolutions and outcomes were realistic and nothing was over-done or corny. In fact, another reason I enjoyed this read (and think it will be on my mind for a while - the sign of a great book!!) is that not all of the conflicts were blatantly resolved. Sure, there is an epilogue where a little bit more clarity and information was given, but several points were not resolved and were left fairly open to the readers to consider for themselves.
While I received a pre-print copy and several typo's were to be expected, I thought the author's writing style was believable, flowing, cohesive and just the right tempo for my taste. I like my books to move quickly, but I want realistic details so that I can actually visualize places and enough character development so that they become real people in my head. This book delivered all of those things.
I enjoyed this book so much, I am going to purchase more from this author. Highly recommended!
Final Word: A
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