Welcome to Litsy!

Jane Flanagan returns home to Maine to lick her wounds after steamrolling her life and career while under the influence. There she reckons with her mom‘s recent death, her family‘s legacy of alcoholism, and the unexpected history of a house she “adopted” as a teen. There is a lot going on in this book between Jane‘s story, diversions into indigenous history, and first person deep dives into historical characters with connections to the house. ⬇️

…and everyone wanted to be Allison‘s best friend. But for some reason, she chose Jane, the nerd, the new girl, the one who reads novels at the bus stop before school because she liked reading novels, but also because she hoped it might disguise the fact of how alone she was 📚

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet 🌙

The story started out promising. A woman buys an old house that is possibly haunted and hires a historian to look into the previous owners.
The story primarily follows Jane while she researches the house's past while dealing with her own personal struggles. The way all the past characters connected was very cool. However, this story goes on a lot of tangents that could have been left out.
Overall, it was good, but I had to push through a bit.

I loved this book to start, then I got a little lost with all the story lines, and then it finished strong. So overall a pick, but somewhat uneven.

It‘s a pick and I did enjoy it. But it was kind of all over the place and parts of it (in the middle, especially) read like a textbook, which was distracting and a bit jarring. I didn‘t care for the main character, either. Which all sounds like I didn‘t actually enjoy it 😳😄… but despite the unlikeable character and the disjointed narrative, it‘s still a compelling read.

J. Courtney Sullivan always hits for me. This seems to be a departure from her normal type of book, but still set in Maine (how many Maine books can I read in one year!? 🤔) and still features dysfunctional families. In this book, the center of the story is a historic home on the coast of Maine. Sullivan zooms in on each of the inhabitants over time, and makes connections between characters, and the past and present. I really enjoyed this!

When your library hold comes in JUST as you arrive home from knee surgery and will be on the couch for several days. Libby for the win! 🥇 🙌🏼

For the most part, this was a 4-star read but there were a couple of "history lessons" that pulled me out of the story. It felt like one of those "I'm going to include it so everyone knows I researched it" situations. That aside, I enjoyed the way Sullivan rolled out the story with one main character anchoring us while giving us the stories of the other women. I would have liked to revisit some of them but it was a stronger story without that.

Sure did love J. Courtney Sullivan‘s latest!