Grievance by Christine Bell

Author: Christine Bell
Publisher: Lake Union Press
Date of publication: July 2017

After weathering the first gut-wrenching year since her husband’s death, Lily Declan is trying to move past her grief and find a place of healing for herself and her two young sons.

But when a strange sympathy letter arrives, the quiet life Lily has rebuilt from her sorrow comes under stealthy, sinister attack. On her wedding anniversary, an intimate bridal gift is delivered to her door. Then, a bizarre home invasion shatters her sense of security, and a mysterious Facebook memorial appears. Like a hungry ghost, someone seeks to claim her love and loss as their own, to erase Lily from her own life and possess her beloved forever, in an embrace of macabre devotion.

As more threats follow, Lily’s home and family are no longer her safe haven, and it’s become difficult to tell friend from foe. But after everything she’s already lost, she won’t give up her memories—or her family—without a fight.

Grievance was as random pick from the library.  I have very mixed feeling about the story.  In the end it was just an OK read for me.  In the story, Lily has lost her husband from cancer.  It's been almost a year when she notices strange things happening.   The one strong thing I can say about the book was the realistic way that Lily's grief is portrayed.  I could empathize with Lily and understand how and why she would try to find little messages from her husband in every day things, like songs on the radio.  Her daily mantra about what she had to do were signs that she was just making if through each day.  Keep her kids safe, keep her house, keep her job were what she needed to hold onto to make it through the day.

On the downside, the story started out really slow.  It felt like it took forever to get going.  Once it did, it went along fairly fast. The mystery was  a bit weak and not one I would call thrilling. My biggest issue was with the reveal and resolution in the end.  The person's motives were really disturbing and, quite honestly, off putting.  I didn't care for that part of the story line.  At any rate, it's a quick read and one I thing people will have to judge for themselves.