Emily Madden
Reviewed by Helen
Awesome, fabulous, amazing where do I start? I loved this one from page one I inhaled, devoured every word a story set across three generations from Hawaii 1941 to Sydney 2016 a young Catherine (Kitty) McGarrie meets the love of her life, her soul mate on her sixteenth birthday and what happens is an amazing story of love, heartache and a lost pearl, make sure you have a box tissues handy and wipe the calendar because you won’t want to put this one down.
Kitty is loving living in Honolulu with her father who is a Rear Admiral, her mother and brother who is also in the navy, her best friend is Penny and life is good, her mother is very upper class and organizes a big sixteenth birthday party and there she meets Charlie a sailor from the wrong side of the tracks but even at sixteen Kitty knows where her heart belongs, and Charlie is hit with cupids arrow as well love at first sight, but with talk of the Americans joining the war and Kitty and her mother being sent to Australia for safety, Kitty plans a day with Charlie a fabulous day of love and hope, but the world as they know it changes when early on the morning of December 7 Pearl Harbour is bombed and lives are lost and changed forever.
Seventy five years later Catherine has had a fall and in hospital and when her precious granddaughter Kit comes to visit she tells her a secret, a secret of a lost love and Kit a journalist takes on trying to find out more about this secret, but it could break a family apart or bring them together, a family that has learnt never to ask their mother or grandmother about her life in Hawaii before she came to Australia. Kit returns to Hawaii for the seventy fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbour and here she uncovers a lot more about her grandmother and will she discover a love for herself?
This is a must read book, I am still crying while writing this review, it is just beautiful, the research must have caused a lot of tears MS Madden, not just about Pearl Harbour but about things that happened here in Australia, it is emotional, moving and wonderful, I highly recommend it, truly it is one of the best books I have read this year and is going to stay with me for a long time to come. You rock MS Madden you made me smile and cry with this gorgeously written story thank you.
5/5 stars for a fabulous story
Published
August 20th 2018
by MIRA
