Book Reviews: The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce and Water's Edge by Sara Gruen

If you read -- and loved -- The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, then you will be interested in reading The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. As Harold walks to Queenie, she, along with her friends at the hospice, wait with anticipation for his arrival.

For over twenty years, Queenie lived in her seaside cottage with a beautiful garden where she dreamed of the man she was quietly in love with, Harold Fry. 

As Queenie’s body is ravaged by cancer, she is no longer able to care for herself and lives out the remainder of her days in hospice care. Not able to speak, she writes her confessions, feelings of guilt and secrets she has carried -- namely her unrequited love for Harold and her relationship with his son.

This book is not a sequel to The Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, rather it's written as a parallel piece. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy is beautifully written, and compassionate, and my heart broke as I read about Queenie’s love for Harold which she secretly carried around with her. Highly recommended!

The next book I recommend is At Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen.

Socialite Maddie, her husband Ellis and their best friend Hank are spoiled and wealthy twenty-somethings who decide after a fight with Ellis’ parents, to run off to Scotland in search of the Loch Ness monster. Years before, Ellis’ own father had set off to find the famed monster and embarrassed himself and the family; now, Ellis seeks redemption. When they reach Scotland, Hank and Ellis essentially dump Maddie at the inn where they are staying and go off to drunkenly search for the monster.

While Maddie is left alone with none of the luxuries afforded to her in her previous life, she begins to bond with the staff. She starts pitching in to help with the work of running the inn.

As she gets to know those around her, Maddie begins to see Hank and Ellis for what they really are: spoiled and self-indulgent drunks. It's at the end of World War II and Maddie suspects her husband, proclaimed color blind and thus ineligible to fight in the war, is faking his ailment to avoid fighting.  Maddie sees her husband in a new and unflattering light and realizes her marriage is nothing but a sham built on lies. It’s how Maddie proceeds with her newfound knowledge about her husband that glued me to the pages of the novel.

I found this book to be riveting -- from the backdrop of World War II, to Maddie’s transformation as a person, I couldn’t put it down.