From Booklist
Best-selling Hannah's latest sensitive tale explores the need we all have for love in a portrait of two women of different ages and backgrounds. Angie Malone has come back to her small Washington State town after suffering the loss of a child, the end of a marriage, and the death of her father. Nestled in the bosom of her family, she tries to help with their failing restaurant. Her mother and sisters are glad she's home but realize that she needs something more as she copes with her grief, yet when Angie reaches out to 18-year-old Lauren Ribido, who seeks a job at the restaurant, they worry that she'll be disappointed. Lauren has not had an easy life. Her mother is an alcoholic who reminds Lauren constantly that she was a mistake and is the reason for their poverty, but Lauren is trying to rise above her circumstances through hard work and a quest for a college scholarship. Angie becomes attached to her and acts like a surrogate mother as they embark on a shaky friendship. Hannah captures the joy and heartache of family as she draws the reader into the lives of her characters and makes them feel like personal friends, proving once again why she is a star of women's fiction. Patty Engelmann
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