My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Many thanks to Net Galley, Lake Union publishing and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

Emily Carpenter’s Burying the Honeysuckle Girls has been popping up on my recommendation list for a long while. But I have not got around to reading that, but when given a chance to read Reviving the Hawthorn Sisters from Net Galley, I pounced on it. The blurb had all the elements of a guaranteed success story. Dual timeline, family secrets, romance, there was no way I was not reading this.

Reviving The Hawthorn Sisters talks about the burden of family legacy with a bit of psychic element added to it. The story had a lovely southern charm that keeps the reader enthralled. The dual time line story, one centered around Dove Jarrod from the time she’s 13 years old and growing up in an asylum to her final escape as the wife of Charles Jarrod is wonderful to read. Just like the blooms of the hawthorn there’s peculiar atmospheric feel in the story as along with Dove’s granddaughter Eve, the reader takes a journey to know if Dove’s claim of being a liar as an evangelist is true and if there are more secrets hidden in the closet.

Eve’s sense of family loyalty and the sacrifices she endures to keep her mother sane and her brother free from addiction was touching. The romance with Griff was also a beautiful addition. I wished that Griff had a little more substantial role but nothing to crib about as the females in the story like Althea and Ember made for some interesting personalities.

The alternating chapters are short and snappy but my only ‘grumble’ comes from the fact that the threat of the antique missing coin that seem to be hanging over Eve’s head just don’t feel menacing or alarming in any way. Eve’s justification to keep everything hidden also kind of fell flat and thereby makes feeling any sympathy hard to come.

The bestselling author of Burying the Honeysuckle Girls returns to uncover a faith healer’s elusive and haunted past.

Dove Jarrod was a renowned evangelist and faith healer. Only her granddaughter, Eve Candler, knows that Dove was a con artist. In the eight years since Dove’s death, Eve has maintained Dove’s charitable foundation—and her lies. But just as a documentary team wraps up a shoot about the miracle worker, Eve is assaulted by a vengeful stranger intent on exposing what could be Dove’s darkest secret: murder…

Tuscaloosa, 1934: a wily young orphan escapes the psychiatric hospital where she was born. When she joins the itinerant inspirational duo the Hawthorn Sisters, the road ahead is one of stirring new possibilities. And with an obsessive predator on her trail, one of untold dangers. For a young girl to survive, desperate choices must be made.

Now, to protect her family, Eve will join forces with the investigative filmmaker and one of Dove’s friends, risking everything to unravel the truth behind the accusations against her grandmother. But will the truth set her free or set her world on fire? 

This review is published in my blog https://rainnbooks.wordpress.com/; Amazon India, Goodreads, and Twitter.