Honesty Is the Best Policy…and More
I really liked this book for three reasons. First, it is a mother-daughter love story and that’s a favorite of mine. (See my review of The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah.) And beyond that, the author and I seem to be on the same page with basic life philosophy. Thus she takes an entire book to show us that honesty is always the best policy. And additionally, she shows us – twice – that it’s best to go slow in relationships because that’s how people reveal themselves – slowly.
I’ve called this a mother-daughter love story, but there are actually two daughters, Phoebe and Astra. They are very close to their mother, Thea, who was a doctor but who is now a patient, dying of cancer. Phoebe is the older sister, and the book opens on the cusp of her wedding. Astra is a college student who comes home to attend. Sadly, Thea passes away in the months after the wedding.
Since the book focuses on Astra’s life, how she has been shaped by her mother and how she is impacted by the loss of her mother makes up the majority of the book as we progress through Astra’s life from June 1995 thru May 1999 with an epilogue extending the story into 2002.
In the middle of the book I wondered if this was enough of a storyline, but yes, it was. Especially taking into consideration several awful things that happened in Astra’s life in those short years and how expertly they were woven together by the author to make her points about honesty and about people of good character.
I will not give any spoilers, but the book is broken down into sections and there is something very meaningful in each one. Here are the section titles and a little about each:
- The Prologue – Here we learn how authoritative and calm Thea could be in an emergency, and see these traits being embedded into Astra’s soul.
- The Wedding – The book jacket tells us there will be “a terrible accident the night of the wedding that changes Astra’s life forever.” This gives the opening chapters the feel of a mystery that serves to pull the reader in. (Enquiring minds want to know what happened!) It also gives Astra a chance to be calm in an emergency.
- The promise – This section is also mysterious. Thea exacts a promise from someone shortly before her death. We don’t learn what the promise is and it was certainly an odd person from whom she was asking the favor. When we ultimately learn what was asked, there was a little bit of woo-woo involved that I absolutely fell for and loved.
- The Pitch-Black Room – While the terrible accident the night of the wedding involved a lot of people; two other terrible things happened to Astra alone. One happened in the pitch-black room. And the other happened in the section called:
- The Letter Box – In both instances, the suspense had my heart pounding, proving to me how well written this book is.
- Epilogue – This moves the story along by three years. It takes us to Thanksgiving with Phoebe and Astra and the extended family, which now includes Phoebe’s two children, a son and a daughter. One could think this a ho-hum conclusion, but I thought it masterful in its quiet way. Phoebe and Astra were happy – and their mother would have been happy – about their “remarkable, beautiful business of living.”
In closing I would like to note that I was given a review copy of When She Was Ours by the book’s publicist in return for an honest review. Honestly! I really liked this one.
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If you like my writing, I hope you will check out my new book, Chai on Life. It contains 36 slice-of-life stories ranging in topics from belly fat to Billy Joel. It is available wherever books are sold and on Amazon. There is even a companion journal for you to write the stories of your life.
Chai on Life is available in 3 formats: Hard Back, Kindle, and AudioBook.
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