Book Review - The Memory Keeper by Jenny Hale

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Title: The Memory Keeper

Author: Jenny Hale

Format reviewed: Ebook

Source: Publisher supplied copy

Publisher: Harpeth Road Press

Publication Date: 26th January 2021

Rating: 5 Stars

Hannah Townsend’s life is just as she’s always wanted it to be. She has the perfect job at a New York magazine, a small but elegant apartment in the upper west side, and an incredibly successful beau named Miles Monahan. This year, for her thirty-fifth birthday, she’s leaving the icy city sludge for sunshine! She’s got tickets for two to Barbados, and she’s all packed and meeting Miles at the airport for a week of cocktails, sandy beaches, and the music of steel drums.

But her life is turned upside down in the span of that one morning. Hannah is rocked by the news that her beloved grandmother is very sick, and Hannah needs to come home to her small Tennessee town right away to be with her family and help run her gran’s dilapidated flower shop. It also means she has to face Ethan Wright, the best friend she’d left behind so many years ago. If that isn’t enough to deal with, she discovers her boyfriend is seeing someone else.

With flights grounded and rental cars in great demand due to the winter snowstorm, she’s stranded at the airport. On her birthday, instead of waking up in a stylish beachfront hotel in Miles’s arms like she thought, she finds herself packed like sardines into a car, with two passengers, on a ride-share from LaGuardia Airport to her hometown of Franklin, Tennessee.

When everything seems to be going wrong, it’s the kindness of a handsome businessman from Hannah’s past named Liam McGuire that might just save her. But a new development that threatens Gran’s shop and secrets surrounding Liam could alter both their lives forever.

A heartwarming, sweet romance that will have you laughing, crying, and best of all, hugging those around you a little tighter. If you loved the Christmas movies based on Jenny’s books and are looking for more feel-good, small town romance, look no further!

Heartwarming story that has brought a song to my heart. 

This was such a lovely story that was able to take my mind of my vaccine side effects, and I was able to read this in one afternoon, enjoying every word. 

I loved seeing how Hannah started to come into her own, and her new friendships with Georgia and Liam, who she meets at LaGuardia and ends up driving back to Franklin, Tennessee with.  She sort of knew Liam from when she was a teenager, and I enjoyed seeing the connection between Liam and Hannah grow.  And Georgia's reasons for travelling to Franklin, are more complex and I enjoyed seeing how her story developed too. 

And The Memory Keeper is initially a wreck of a flower shop but its very dear to Hannah's gran and provides a focal point for the story, and I enjoyed seeing the transformation as they attempt to see if the shop can be saved. 

I surprisingly also enjoyed Hannah's gran's journal which was written during WW2, given I don't tend to enjoy anything remotely historical, but kept wanting Hannah to read the journal faster to see how certain aspects would turn out. 

I love a Jenny Hale small town romance, and find US based small town romances to be such cosy and comforting sorts of read, and this really did hit all the spots on a day where I wasn't feeling myself. 

Thank you to Harpeth Road Press for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.