A Keeper: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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It's a sad and lovely book, brimful of tenderness and compassion, where the revelations of the past upturn the perceptions of the present. - SUNDAY EXPRESS

Well this book was a surprise read. Recommended to me by my son. I had seen a few of his shows - but not to my taste.The novel opens with forty-something Elizabeth Keane, a divorced lecturer in Romantic poetry based in New York, returning to her hometown of Buncarragh following the death of her mother, Patricia. Growing up in a small town and without a father, Elizabeth longed to get away and now as a single mother herself to a teenage son she is none too pleased to be reunited with her judgmental extended family as she plans to clear the house for sale. Stumbling across a small wooden box of letters penned to her mother in the early Seventies in response to a lonely hearts advert by the man she has been told is her father it provides her first opportunity to learn more about Edward Foley. Despite asking her uncle and her mother’s former friend about her mother’s brief time in the coastal town of Muirinish she learns nothing more than that Patricia returned following Edward’s death with local suspicion that she had been pregnant prior to leaving Buncarragh prevailing. As Elizabeth goes in search of her own answers and worries about her AWOL son, Zach, she finds rather more than she bargained for and ultimately gains a new appreciation for the woman her mother was.

I tend to wait at least a day after finishing a book to post a review, but I am highly annoyed right now and just want to put this book behind me. I maybe at one point while reading this ARC said are you serious and then started muttering to myself about just DNFing it. I don't like to do that with NetGalley reads though, so I may have to rethink on that in the future. This book was all over the place. I thought I was sitting down to read a solid mystery about a woman returning (Elizabeth) to her hometown in Ireland and finding out about her mother's (Patricia) past. Instead we don't really find out about it, we hear bits and pieces via other inconsequential secondary characters. The author throwing Patrica's POV in did nothing to help things. The plot with Elizabeth's son came out of nowhere and just made zero sense. Maybe if Norton actually spent time building up any of these characters I would have cared more. I had a couple of “eye roll” moments with this book, and I noticed several detail oversights, but this was an excellent read for me. There wasn’t a single character here I didn’t like, or at least sympathize with (including Edward’s deranged mother Catherine) and I loved the setting. Recommended to mystery fans or anyone looking for a riveting read on a rainy day.From the bestselling author of HOLDING comes a masterly tale of secrets and ill-fated loves set on the coast of Ireland. Absolutely delightful - the kind of book you should always reach for if you're in a slump. Well-written, a good, just right amount of bewildering storyline and good characters. Magnificent ... his writing is evocative and perfect. His grasp of human loneliness and longing is beautiful and comforting.' MARIAN KEYES