About the Book
Family is everything—Grace Adams McHale’s mom must have said it to her a thousand times before she died. Before Grace’s dad ran off with an aspiring actress half his age. Before only-child Grace found out she was unable to have children of her own. Before Brian—her childhood best friend, business partner, and finally her husband—dropped a “bombshell” on her in the form of her stunning new replacement.
Which means Grace now has…nothing.
Until she receives a letter from a woman claiming to be a relative Grace never knew she had, sending her on a journey from the childhood home she had to move back into, to a Florida island to meet a total stranger who embraces her as family. There, Grace starts to uncover answers about the eccentric woman her family never mentioned: a larger-than-life octogenarian who is the keeper of a secret held for more than fifty years, and the ultimate inspiration to always be true to yourself. As Grace gets to know this woman and picks up the pieces of her own shattered life, she is forced to question whether she can find forgiveness for the unforgivable
My Review
When I first started reading, I was pretty jealous of our main character Grace. 2020 was shockingly a bit of a hard year for me – no one else can say that, I know – and at one point I tweeted that I wished I was like a heroine in the chick lit novels I read that when my life gets rough, a long-lost family member appears and I get to put real life on pause while I live with them and learn about our family history. That tweet has not yet become a reality for me, but that’s what happened in A Little Bit of Grace and I loved every minute of watching Grace travel from the Midwest to Florida and live with her Aunt Millie.
I also deeply appreciated the modern plotlines that were discussed in this story. While the setting was beautiful, Grace was easy to root for, there was divorce and heartbreak and then a potential romance angle, there was also a human element to this book that I thought was very timely and incredibly well-written. I had a lot of feelings reading about Millie and her treatment from her family, how she endured through it, and how her life lessons were then passed on to Grace. When I first read the title, synopsis and glanced at the cover, I thought I knew what I would be reading and it was so much more.
5 stars
