ISBN: 9781525804557
Publication Date: June 6, 2020
Publisher: Graydon House Books
For fans of Robyn Carr, commercial women's fiction about
three generations of women who come together at the family orchard to face
secrets from the past and learn to believe in the power of hope and
forgiveness.
In cherry season, anything is possible...
Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from her late-mother's stories. So when she arrives at the Northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she's not sure if she'll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.
Hope's aunt, Peg, has lived in the Orchard House all her life, though the property has seen better days. She agrees to take Hope in if, in exchange, Hope helps with the cherry harvest—not exactly Hope's specialty, but she's out of options. As Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter, and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom. But the mistakes of the past are never far behind, and soon the women will find themselves fighting harder than ever for their family roots and for each other.
Everything Hope knows about the Orchard House is from her late-mother's stories. So when she arrives at the Northern Michigan family estate late one night with a terrible secret and her ten-year-old daughter in tow, she's not sure if she'll be welcomed or turned away with a shotgun by the aunt she has never met.
Hope's aunt, Peg, has lived in the Orchard House all her life, though the property has seen better days. She agrees to take Hope in if, in exchange, Hope helps with the cherry harvest—not exactly Hope's specialty, but she's out of options. As Hope works the orchard alongside her aunt, daughter, and a kind man she finds increasingly difficult to ignore, a new life begins to blossom. But the mistakes of the past are never far behind, and soon the women will find themselves fighting harder than ever for their family roots and for each other.
BUY LINKS:
I read The Bitter and Sweet of
Cherry Season in one sitting. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story is
told through three points of view: Peg, Hope and Tink. They are 2 woman
and one child who find healing in the power of friendship and family. The story
is also about how forgiveness can help you to look toward the future and stop
regretting the past.
I loved all three main
characters. I was rooting for them all. The story is gut wrenching
at times but there are also sweet moments between the three. I loved the
budding romance between Hope and Abel. It was a slow burn and super
sweet. My favorite point of view was Tink's. I loved seeing the events
through the eyes of a ten-year-old. She was innocent, yet older than her
years. I highly recommend this book!
Enjoy this sneak peek:
Chapter 1
HOPE
Night
up in Northern Michigan was no joke.
Hope had never seen a dark so dark. It had heft and
dimension, like she was driving right into an abyss. She thought about waking
up Tink in the back to show her, but the girl had finally fallen asleep and she
needed the rest.
And Hope needed a break.
Who knew traveling with a completely silent, angry and
traumatized ten-year-old could be so exhausting?
Hope’s phone had died when she got off the highway about
twenty minutes ago. In those last few minutes of battery she had tried to
memorize the directions:
Left on Murray Street.
Slight right onto County Road 72.
Your destination is five miles on the right.
But County Road 72 wasn’t well marked and now she feared she
was lost. Well, for sure she was lost; in the grand scheme of things she was
totally off the map.
But she was clinging to the one ratty thread of hope she had
left in her hand.
And then just as that tiny bit of thread started to slip out
of her fingers, from the murk emerged a blue sign.
County Road 72.
The road took a long arcing right into the dark, and she
unrolled her window, trying to keep herself awake. Adrenaline and gas station
coffee could only do so much against two sleepless nights.
Her yawn was so wide it split her lip. Again. Copper-tasting
blood pooled in her mouth.
“Shit,” she breathed and pressed the last of the napkins
against her mouth. She was even out of napkins.
In the back, Tink woke up. Hope heard the change in her
breathing. The sudden gasp like she was waking up from a nightmare.
Or into one. Hard to say.
“Hey,” Hope said, looking over her shoulder into the shadows
of the back seat. Her daughter’s pale face like a moon slid into the space
between the driver and passenger seats. “We’re almost there.” Hope
sounded like they were about to drive up to the gates of Disney World.
Tink rubbed her eyes.
“Did
you see the stars?” Hope’s voice climbed into that range she’d recently
developed. Dementedly cheerful. Stepford Mom on helium. She winced at the sound
of it. That wasn’t her. It wasn’t how she talked to Tink. And yet she couldn’t
tune her voice back to normal. “There are so many of them. I don’t think I’ve
ever seen so many stars.”
Tink
ducked her head to look out the windshield and then turned to cock her head at
an angle so she could look out the passenger windows.
They’d
gone to an exhibit about the constellations at the Science Center a year ago
and Tink still talked about it. Pointing up at Sirius like she’d discovered it
herself.
“Aren’t those the pieties?” Hope got the name wrong on
purpose, hoping for a snotty-toned correction from her miniature astronomer. Or
at least a throat-clearing scoff.
But no.
“Sooner
or later you’re going to talk to me,” she said. “You’re going to open that
mouth and all the words you haven’t said all day are gonna come pouring out.”
Silence.
“Do you
want to ask me questions about where we’re going?” They were, after all,
heading deep into Northern Michigan to a place she and Tink had never been, and
Hope had never told her about until today.
Tink
rubbed her eyes again.
“Or maybe
what happened…tonight?” Her gaze bounced between Tink and the road.
When
you’re older, you’ll understand. When you’re a mom, you’ll understand. She
wanted to say that to her daughter, but she herself barely understood any of
what had happened the last two days.
Still
silence.
Hope
tried a different angle. “I’m telling you, Tink. I know you and you can’t keep
this up much longer. I’ll bet you ten bucks you say something to me in
five…four…three…two…” She pulled in a breath that tasted like tears and
blood.
Please, honey. Please.
“One.” She sighed. “Fine. You win.”
Her beat-up hatchback bounced over the uneven asphalt and
Tink crawled from the backseat into the front, her elbow digging into Hope’s
shoulder, her flip-flopped foot kicking her in the thigh.
The degree of parenting it would take to stop Tink from doing
that, or to discuss the potential dangers and legality of it, was completely
beyond her. She was beyond pick your battles, into some new kind of wild west
motherhood. Pretend there were no battles.
They drove another five minutes until finally, ahead, there
was a golden halo of light over the trees along the side of the road, and Hope
slowed down. A gravel driveway snaked through the darkness and she took it on
faith that it had been five miles.
“This is it.”
Please let this be it.
The driveway opened up and there was a yellow-brick,
two-story house.
The Orchard House. That was what Mom called it in the few
stories she’d told about growing up here. Actually, the words she used were The
Goddamn Orchard House.
It was a grand old-fashioned place with second-story windows
like empty eyes staring down at them. White gingerbread nestled up in the
corners of the roof, and there was a big wide porch with requisite rocking
chairs.
Seriously, it was so charming, it could have been
fake.
The car rolled to a stop and Hope put it in park. Her
maniacal new voice failed her, and she just sat there. Silent.
Suddenly the front door opened and a dog – a big one, with
big teeth – came bounding out. Cujo stopped at the top of the steps and started
barking. Behind the dog came a woman in a blue robe carrying a shotgun.
Tink made a high panicked sound in her voice, climbing up in
her seat.
Hope’s impulse was to turn the car around and get out of
there. The problem was there was nowhere to turn around to. They had no
place left to go.
“It’s okay, honey,” Hope lied. She went as far as to put her
hand over Tink’s bony knee, the knob of it fitting her palm like a baseball.
“Everything’s going to be all right.”
More desperate than brave, Hope popped open the door. The
dog’s bark, unmuffled by steel and glass, was honest-to-god blood curdling.
“Hi!” she yelled, trying to be both cheerful and loud enough to be heard over
the barking.
“Get your hands up,” the woman on the porch
shouted.
Hope shoved her hands up through the crack between the door
and the car and did a kind of jazz hands with her fingers.
“What do you want?” the woman asked.
“Are you Peg—”
“I can’t hear you.”
She stood up, her head reaching up over the door. “Are you
Peg?”
“Never mind, me. Who the hell are you?” She pointed the
business end of the gun toward them.
Hope quickly side-stepped away from the car door, and Tink
reached across the driver’s seat and slammed it shut.
The heavy thud of the engaged lock was unmistakeable.
“You don’t know me—”
“No shit!”
“My name is Hope,” she said.
The gun lowered and the woman’s face changed. From anger to
something more careful. “Hope?”
“Yeah. I’m Denise’s girl. I’m…well, you’re my aunt?”
Excerpted from The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season by Molly Fader, Copyright © 2020 by Molly Fader. Published by Graydon House Books
About the author:
Molly Fader is the author of The McAvoy Sisters Book of Secrets. She is also the award-winning author of more than forty romance novels under the pennames Molly O'Keefe and M. O'Keefe. She grew up outside of Chicago and now lives in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter, @mollyokwrites.
SOCIAL:
Author Website: http://mollyfader.com/
TWITTER: @MollyOKwrites
FB: @MollyFader
Insta: @mokeefeauthor
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