A Mother Like Mine by Kate Hewitt

About the book: (from the publisher) Welcome to England’s beautiful Lake District, where a reluctant reunion forges a new bond between a daughter and her wayward mother….
 
Abby Rhodes is just starting to get her life on track. After her fiancé’s unexpected death, she returned with her young son to the small village where she grew up and threw herself into helping her ailing grandmother run the town’s beach café. Then one evening, her mother, Laura, shows up in Hartley-by-the-Sea and announces her plan to stay. After twenty years away, she now wants to focus on the future—and has no intention, it seems, of revisiting the painful past.

Laura Rhodes has made a lot of mistakes, and many of them concern her daughter. But as Abby gets little glimpses into her mother’s life, she begins to realize there are depths to Laura she never knew. Slowly, Abby and Laura start making tentative steps toward each other, only to have life become even more complicated when an unexpected tragedy arises. Together, the two women will discover truths both sad and surprising that draw them closer to a new understanding of what it means to truly forgive someone you love.

About the author: Kate Hewitt is the USA Today bestselling author of more than forty books, including the Hartley-by-the-Sea novels Rainy Day Sisters and Now and Then Friends. She has also written as Katharine Swartz.

Connect: Website | Facebook | Twitter 

Genre: Fiction/Contemporary Women’s Fiction

[bctt tweet=”The latest Hartley-by-the-Sea novel by bestselling Kate Hewitt A MOTHER LIKE MINE” username=”KatherineSJones”]

My take: Although this latest installment in the popular Hartley-by-the-Sea series contains more inviting, seaside descriptions and collection of off-beat characters, I could not get into this one as I did the previous two of the series. It felt, perhaps, a little like trying to wring a few more drops of water from a drying sponge. I didn’t find either of the main characters — mother and daughter — sufficiently unique or appealing to hold my attention, and the drama was slow to lift off the ground. In the end, it lacked the emotional resonance I have enjoyed in other Kate Hewitt novels. While I would highly recommend the first of the series (Rainy Day Sisters), I would give this one a pass.

Thanks to Berkley for providing me this book free of charge. All opinions are mine.

After words: What serial novel are you reading this summer?