The River Home

At a British country home called Windfalls, middle daughter Lucy Sorrell wishes to reunite her estranged family by inviting them all to the happy yet spontaneous occasion of her wedding. The biggest crack in her family’s foundation is the rift between her youngest sister, Margot, and their mother, best-selling romance author Kit Weaver; at 17, Margo set fire to and destroyed Kit’s writing studio containing the unfinished manuscript of her novel. Richell’s (Secrets of the Tides) latest is an amazing work of Brit lit/women’s fiction, a tearjerker about love, loss, family, secrets, and the courage of carrying on, focusing on the relationships among sisters, mothers, and daughters. Set mostly in the present with occasional trips into the recent past to fill in blanks, this character-driven tale flows effortlessly with the author’s descriptive prose painting every emotional scene with care. Her skill at peeling away the layers of and revealing the raw pain in this incredibly complicated family is exemplary and extremely important to the narrative.