Book Review: Family Tree by Susan Wiggs

Family Tree

by Susan Wiggs

HarperCollins 

 Amazon | Barnes & Noble

 Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (January 9, 2018)

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful, emotionally complex story of love, loss, the pain of the past—and the promise of the future.

Sometimes the greatest dream starts with the smallest element. A single cell, joining with another. And then dividing. And just like that, the world changes. Annie Harlow knows how lucky she is. The producer of a popular television cooking show, she loves her handsome husband and the beautiful Los Angeles home they share. And now, she’s pregnant with their first child. But in an instant, her life is shattered. And when Annie awakes from a yearlong coma, she discovers that time isn’t the only thing she’s lost.

Grieving and wounded, Annie retreats to her old family home in Switchback, Vermont, a maple farm generations old. There, surrounded by her free-spirited brother, their divorced mother, and four young nieces and nephews, Annie slowly emerges into a world she left behind years ago: the town where she grew up, the people she knew before, the high-school boyfriend turned judge. And with the discovery of a cookbook her grandmother wrote in the distant past, Annie unearths an age-old mystery that might prove the salvation of the family farm.

Family Tree is the story of one woman’s triumph over betrayal, and how she eventually comes to terms with her past. It is the story of joys unrealized and opportunities regained. Complex, clear-eyed and big-hearted, funny, sad, and wise, it is a novel to cherish and to remember.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

It was one of those moments Gran used to call a key moment.  Time didn’t simply tick past, unremarked, unnoticed.  No, this was the kind of moment that made everything stop.  You separated it from every other one, pressing the feeling to your heart, like a dried flower slipped between the pages of a beloved book.  The moment was made of something fragile and delicate, yet it possessed the power to last forever. 

Memories are strange things, aren’t they?  You can’t touch them and hold them in your hands, but they have incredible power. 

That’s the moment when everything changes.  There’s before, and then after.  And once a key moment occurs, there’s no going back to before.  You make a choice, and it’s like ringing a bell.  You can’t unring it.  A key moment is a feeling.  Your heart tells you.  The point is, you have to pay attention. 

That was how love worked sometimes… It filled every nook and cranny of your heart, and then one day you realized it had gone away.  She wondered where those feelings went.  Maybe they trickled into the atmosphere to be inhaled by someone else, a stranger who suddenly saw someone across the room and instantly fell I love. 

My Review:

This was my first experience enjoying Ms. Wigg’s amusing and dynamic storytelling and I immediately became an instant and ravenous fan.  I adored her quirky characters, clever humor, and insightful narrative.  Her storylines were poignant, entertaining, heart squeezing, intriguing, and thoughtfully written.  The descriptive detail of her food preparations played havoc with my diet plan, ultimately causing me to run to the farmers market for my own fresh ingredients from her spark of culinary creativity.  Her skillful wordcraft was a delight for all the senses and I doubt I could ever tire of feasting on her work.  I was provided with a review of this delicious book by TLC Book Tours and HarperCollins.

Empress DJ

About Susan Wiggs  

Susan Wiggs is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than fifty novels, including the beloved Lakeshore Chronicles series and her most recent novel, the instant New York Times bestseller Family Tree. Her award-winning books have been translated into two dozen languages. A native of a small town in upstate New York, she now lives with her husband at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather can commute to her writers’ group in a twenty-one-foot motorboat. A former teacher and graduate of the University of Texas and Harvard, Susan is also an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier, and a cautious mountain biker—yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book.

Find out more about Susan at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.