I’ll Be Your Blue Sky
by Marisa de los Santos
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (December 4, 2018)
The New York Times bestselling author revisits the characters from her beloved novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in this captivating, beautifully written drama involving family, friendship, secrets, sacrifice, courage, and true love for fans of Jojo Moyes, Elin Hilderbrand, and Nancy Thayer.
On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming—yet overly possessive—fiancé.
Three weeks later, Clare learns that Edith has died—and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare. Though the former guest house has been empty for years, Clare feels a deep connection to Edith inside its walls, which are decorated with old photographs taken by Edith and her beloved husband, Joseph.
Exploring the house, Clare finds two mysterious ledgers hidden beneath the kitchen sink. Edith, it seems, was no ordinary woman—and Blue Sky House no ordinary place. With the help of her mother, Viviana, her surrogate mother, Cornelia Brown, and her former boyfriend and best friend, Dev Tremain, Clare begins to piece together the story of Blue Sky House—a decades-old mystery more complex and tangled than she could have imagined. As she peels back the layers of Edith’s life, Clare discovers a story of dark secrets, passionate love, heartbreaking sacrifice, and incredible courage. She also makes startling discoveries about herself: where she’s come from, where she’s going, and what—and who—she loves.
Shifting between the 1950s and the present and told in the alternating voices of Edith and Clare, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is vintage Marisa de los Santos—an emotionally evocative novel that probes the deepest recesses of the human heart and illuminates the tender connections that bind our lives.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
Maybe it comes from having spent most of my childhood alone with my mother, who even before her breakdown and subsequent bipolar diagnosis, was all quicksilver, mutable brilliance, and so necessary to me that I kept track of her with what could only be called vigilance, half worried she’d disappear in a puff of colored smoke and sparkles.
She never fit… All her life, she had never managed polish or tidiness, never, even as a child, been perky or pretty or cute… A gangly girl, now she stood tall, narrow hipped, broad shouldered, leggy as a heron. In an era of things staying in place, of starch and hairspray, she was loosely gathered, pieces of her forever apt to ravel, crease, fly away.
“The world is big and life is long. You never know,” said my mother, giving a shrug that managed to be chic and wise and jaded and careless all at once. It was the kind of shrug for which words like insouciant and urbane were created.
My Review:
A five-star rating is nowhere near enough, nor would ten. Fifteen appears to be a more accurate assessment, which is rare air indeed. Marisa de los Santos is a stunning and mesmerizing wordsmith. This beautiful and intricately crafted book had a soul, and it was lovely, heartbreaking, devastating, gorgeous, and profoundly moving. The writing was exquisite and I didn’t want it to end. At times I couldn’t seem to catch my breath or read fast enough while I also didn't want to rush, as I wanted to savor every artfully chosen and well-honed word. I was intrigued and enthralled with Edith’s story, which could suddenly and unexpectedly spin with a poignancy that stung my eyes and put hot rocks in my throat. In a word, this book was divine.
Empress DJ
About Marisa de los SantosMarisa de los Santos is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning poet with a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family.
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