Book Reviews
[T]he story gets frustrating because the reader wants everything to be right for Molly, and that certainly doesn't always happen. Sure there is some sort of resolution at the end, but it is a disjointed and odd conclusion. However...this novel is sure to find its fans. —Mary Frances Wilkens
Booklist
(YA) For Molly Redwine, maintaining her family is the essence of her existence. When her husband announces he is leaving her for another woman, her world collapses. The "other woman" quickly takes over Molly's social position, her house, and even the affection of her son. With the sudden death of her domineering mother, Molly is truly set adrift. Escaping with friends to Martha's Vineyard, she starts the search for her own identity. When her friends depart, she stays on in a small cottage. As a renter, she must also assume the duties of caretaker of two cantankerous old women who share a haunting secret, a gravely ill and estranged son of one of those women, and two territorial swans. Through the winter, Molly struggles to nurture them as she searches for a future for herself. As with most of Siddons's heroines, Molly is an engaging woman who battles successfully with adversity and remains unsinkable. The author's fans will be delighted with her latest novel and its setting. —Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Middle School, Burke, VA
School Library Journal
Siddons has her formula down to a science (Fault Lines, 1995, etc.), as this latest once again demonstrates. Molly Bell Redwine is a woman who's never had a chance to discover herself. As a child, she lived under the shadow of her glamorous mother. As a young adult, she met and married Tee, a Coca-Cola executive who fathered her two children, Teddy and Caroline, and kept her comfortable in the manner to which she'd become accustomed. When Tee announces out of the blue that he's met a younger woman, a Coke attorney, and wants a divorce, and Molly's mother up and dies without any notice, Molly's stable if painfully dull Atlanta existence is thrown into disarray. On the advice of her transplanted northern friend Liv, she heads to Liv's house in Martha's Vineyard for the rest of the summer, and to everyone's surprise decides to stay once Liv heads back south at the end of the season. On the island, Molly finds herself in an unusual position as house-sitter, nurse, and friend to two elderly, ill women, and as part-time caretaker to one of the women's sons, who's suffering from cancer and has recently had his leg amputated. On top of it all, Molly's depressed, mourning father joins her, hoping to find solace in this place where he and his daughter are anonymous. But as is often the case—at least in a good Siddons novel—alone doesn't last for long, and love comes when it's least expected. What has seemed at first an unbearable burden transforms Molly in ways she couldn't have imagined. Far-fetched but oddly compelling, this beaten-down housewife's journey to self-reliance and happiness has surprising quirks, lively characters, and actual feeling.
Kirkus Reviews