No Place Like Home
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
An enriching and deeply moving novel about love and loss, the bonds of family and friends, and coming home by the USA Today bestselling author of When We Believed in Mermaids.
Life didn’t turn out the way Jewel Sabatino planned. However long she’s been gone, home is waiting.
At seventeen, Jewel fled Colorado for New York City and didn’t look back. Now she’s raising a teenage son alone and is a loving caretaker to her one true friend when she receives a surprising inheritance: her aunt’s Pueblo farm and one hundred acres of land. After decades, it’s time for Jewel to reconnect with everyone and everything she left behind.
Her seventeen-year-old son, Shane, is finally meeting his relatives. Jewel’s soulmate, Michael, has a serene haven for his final days. And Jewel’s welcome back is one of a strong community embracing rich Sicilian traditions, three ebullient sisters preparing for a summer wedding, and a tearful and anxious mother with open arms. But for Jewel, it also means facing her father, who has never forgiven his favorite child for betraying him. And he may never forgive her.
As Jewel’s emotional journey begins, an estranged visitor turns her life around again and could heal her wary heart in ways she never expected.
2024 Revised edition: This edition of No Place Like Home includes editorial revisions.
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The firs Barbara Samuel book I ever read, one of few books to make me cry.
Made me glom her entire backlist and put her on my favourite author list.
Twenty Year Old Book Holds Up Well. First off, to be clear: This new (2024) edition is an updated and revised (with apparently *some* new content) version of a book originally released over 20 years ago. So some of you may have already own/ have read this, and I know there are at least some out there who "only read new releases". But for everyone *else*... this is still a damn good story, 20 years later.
In at least some ways, it is actually a callback to a different era, the era of RENT when friends dying of AIDS was still a major zeitgeist moment and a reality for many, particularly many in urban areas. (I say this because growing up in the exurbs of Atlanta in the era the book was originally published, this just wasn't a reality that was seen much in my area.) This plotline provides both some of the gravitas of the book - addiction being the primary other source - and the meetcute - the male lead is the brother of the friend dying of AIDS.
The romance side of the book is also well done, granted with a lot of lust and pent up sexual frustration as its start and with quite a bit of bedroom action (not always in the bedroom) throughout - once things get going there. Which, again, will be a turn off for some and a selling point for others.
Ultimately, this is a story of a lot of flawed individuals making their way through life as best they can in the situations they find themselves, and this is where the story particularly shines.
Very much recommended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
