The Oysterville Sewing Circle
by Susan Wiggs
Hardcover: 384 pages
William Morrow; First Edition edition
(August 13, 2019)
“Stitched together with love, this is a story just waiting for your favorite reading chair. With her signature style and skill, Susan Wiggs delivers an intricate patchwork of old wounds and new beginnings, romance and the healing power of friendship, wrapped in a lovely little community that’s hiding a few secrets of its own.”
— Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling author of Before We Were Yours
The #1 New York Times bestselling author brings us her most ambitious and provocative work yet—a searing and timely novel that explores the most volatile issue of our time—domestic violence.
At the break of dawn, Caroline Shelby rolls into Oysterville, Washington, a tiny hamlet at the edge of the raging Pacific.
She’s come home.
Home to a place she thought she’d left forever, home of her heart and memories, but not her future. Ten years ago, Caroline launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows.
And in the backseat of Caroline’s car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment—five-year-old Addie and six-year-old Flick. She’s now their legal guardian—a role she’s not sure she’s ready for.
But the Oysterville she left behind has changed. Her siblings have their own complicated lives and her aging parents are hoping to pass on their thriving seafood restaurant to the next generation. And there’s Will Jensen, a decorated Navy SEAL who’s also returned home after being wounded overseas. Will and Caroline were forever friends as children, with the promise of something more . . . until he fell in love with Sierra, Caroline’s best friend, and the most beautiful girl in town. With her modeling jobs drying up, Sierra, too, is on the cusp of reinventing herself.
Caroline returns to her favorite place: the sewing shop owned by Mrs. Lindy Bloom, the woman who inspired her and taught her to sew. There she discovers that even in an idyllic beach town, there are women living with the deepest of secrets. Thus begins the Oysterville Sewing Circle—where women can join forces to support each other through the troubles they keep hidden.
Yet just as Caroline regains her creativity and fighting spirit, and the children begin to heal from their loss, an unexpected challenge tests her courage and her heart. This time, though, Caroline is not going to run away. She’s going to stand and fight for everything—and everyone—she loves.
My Rating:
Since she had left home right out of high school, she had dutifully visited a few times at Christmas… That seemed to satisfy the family and also preserved her status as the official black sheep. Every family needed a pet, her brother Jackson used to joke.
I’ve had my heart broken so many times, it’s all scar tissue…
“Turns out my ‘perfect’ husband pulled the oldest trick in the book. He took up with an associate at the law firm, plotted a slick exit, and brought my life to a screeching halt. She’s awful, too— one of those phony Christians who claimed she was ‘saving herself for marriage.’” “I guess you should have asked whose marriage,”
His eyes were as blue as her favorite color of gumball… As a general rule, she didn’t like boys. With two younger brothers, she was well aware of their shortcomings. Boys were noisy, and they smelled like hamsters, and they had an incomprehensible habit of wearing the same dirty shirt day in and day out until someone made them change.
My Review:
This was a slowly evolving, relatable, and thoughtfully written story in which every woman from most any culture will find something that resonates for her. While predominantly fitting the genre of women’s fiction, it could also be considered a second chance and small-town romance. The realistic storylines were easy to follow, highly assessable, relevant, and cast with a wide variety of unique and endearing yet flawed characters. The writing was engaging and easy to follow yet slyly emotive and stung my eye sockets several times. Susan Wiggs has earned a permanent spot on my list of favorite authors.
I was provided a review copy of this stealthily emotive book by HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours.
About Susan Wiggs
Susan Wiggs’s life is all about family, friends…and fiction. She lives at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather, she commutes to her writers’ group in a 21-foot motorboat. She’s been featured in the national media, including NPR, PRI, and USA Today, has given programs for the US Embassies in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and is a popular speaker locally, nationally, internationally, and on the high seas.From the very start, her writings have illuminated the everyday dramas of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. Her books celebrate the power of love, the timeless bonds of family and the fascinating nuances of human nature. Today, she is an international best-selling, award-winning author, with millions of copies of her books in print in numerous countries and languages. According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with “refreshingly honest emotion,” and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is “one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.” Booklist characterizes her books as “real and true and unforgettable.”
Her novels have appeared in the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and have captured readers’ hearts around the globe with translations into more than 20 languages and 30 countries. She is a three-time winner of the RITA Award,. Her recent novel, The Apple Orchard, is currently being made into a film, and The Lakeshore Chronicles has been optioned for adaptation into a series.
The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier, and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. She lives on an island in Puget Sound, where she divides her time between sleeping and waking.
Visit her website at www.SusanWiggs.com, and connect with Susan on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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