I did not know until after I finished this book that it was the retelling of a Grimm’s fairy tale, and I think not knowing enhanced what was already a beautiful and completely immersive reading experience. Sorcha is the seventh child, and only daughter, of the Lord of the Sevenwaters, and she enjoys a wild, free childhood in the mysterious forests surrounding her family’s keep. Unexpected visitors upset her idyllic life and set her on a long journey to places far away from her beloved […]

There are so many reasons for Joan Castleman to want to leave her husband, which is exactly what she decides to do in the first paragraph of this book, while on a plane headed to Finland, where her husband is to receive the Helsinki prize for fiction. Joe Castleman is self-absorbed, a womanizer and a lazy, uninvolved father to their three adult children, but he is also a talented and successful writer. It was this talent that drew Joan to him 45 years earlier, ending […]