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My Review:

The Optimist's Guide to Letting GoThe Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go by Amy E. Reichert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4 positively optimistic and heartwarming stars to The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go is a special, endearing book. I finished this on Mother’s Day, and I think it would make the perfect Mother’s Day gift because it’s all about mothers and daughters.

Gina’s mother, Lorraine, is harsh and at any given time can offer a laundry list of Gina’s faults. She also has a teenage daughter, May, who is sullen and struggling with her father’s (Gina’s husband’s) death. Nonetheless, Gina has a positive, cheery outlook that annoys Lorraine and May to no end. I love that Gina owns a grilled cheese food truck business, and all the yummy references to one of the most perfect foods on the planet kept my tummy growling!

Tragedy strikes when Lorraine has a sudden stroke, and in the aftermath, a giant family secret is uncovered by Gina, shaking up all she thought was true.

Grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter; all feeling misunderstood.

What do they have in common? A deep love for one another, an unbreakable bond, and the yearning to heal. I love strong female characters! This story was moving, hopeful, honest, and in the end, left me feeling optimistic, too!

Thank you to Amy Reichert, Gallery Books, and Netgalley for the ARC. The Optimist’s Guide to Letting Go will be released on May 15, 2018!

My reviews can also be found on my shiny new blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com

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Synopsis:

Three generations. Seven days. One big secret. The author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake unfolds a mother-daughter story told by three women whose time to reckon with a life-altering secret is running out.

Gina Zoberski wants to make it through one day without her fastidious mother, Lorraine, cataloguing all her faults, and her sullen teenage daughter, May, snubbing her. Too bad there’s no chance of that. Her relentlessly sunny disposition annoys them both, no matter how hard she tries. Instead, Gina finds order and comfort in obsessive list-making and her work at Grilled G’s, the gourmet grilled cheese food truck built by her late husband.

But when Lorraine suffers a sudden stroke, Gina stumbles upon a family secret Lorraine’s kept hidden for forty years. In the face of her mother’s failing health and her daughter’s rebellion, this optimist might find that piecing together the truth is the push she needs to let go…