Good start to the series

A quick read. A nice story of old friends and new. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series. ( )

I loved this book because it was about scrapbooking and friendship and loss and reconnecting. Four girls were inseparable as teens, then grew apart when one kept a secret from the others and when another's son drowns. All have been away from Sweethaven for a number of years.

They started a scrapbook at the insistence of one of the girls. A scrapbook that was later divided up among the 4 before they all went their separate ways.

One gets cancer and returns. Just as she's about to tell her daughter who her father is, she takes a turn for the worse, leaving her daughter to search for answers on her own. This leads to the daughter reconnecting with 2 of her mother's former friends and the mother of the 3rd friend. (The 3rd friend doesn't make an appearance until late in the book.) ( )

I love it when you get the opportunity to review a debut novel because it's either going to introduce you to an great new author or will leave you disappointed. This novel, A Sweethaven Summer by Courtney Walsh is the introduction to a fabulous new author I can't wait for you to meet.

In this novel you are introduced immediately to Suzanne who is in the process of sharing a bombshell secret that she has been compiling for the last five years in a scrapbook/journal she created along with her three friends, Jane, Lila and Meghan. In it, each of them added photos, ticket stubs or notes scribbled on scratch paper that they had gathered every summer since the eighth grade. Would her secret taint those memories? Even though she called the three girls their best friends they didn't even know the secret she'd carried with her on the road out of town. The pages in front of her begged her to come clean, to tell the truth, after all this time.

In the pages of this scrapbook we learn that Jane hated her body, Lila painfully recounted her relationship with an indifferent mother and that Meg confided about being the only nondrinker at a high school party last summer. Confessions. They were all nice girls. All except Suzanne. But they weren't kids anymore - and even their darkest secrets didn't compare to the bombshell she was about to drop. - August 1987.

Now we find Campbell Carter who is Suzanne's daughter and is dealing with her mother's funeral. Little over a week ago, her mother called and asked her to come over to talk about somethings she needed to discuss. She could tell by her mother's tone that she was nearing the end of her struggle with cancer and was squaring things away. Only she would never get to know what she wanted to discuss because when she arrived home, she found her mother lying on the floor. She would never wake up and thus Campbell would be orphaned at 24. If only she could know what her mother wanted to tell her before she died. She wouldn't until she came across the scrapbook her mother and her friends made and that is where the story begins.

I received this heartwarming and charming novel compliments of Christian Fiction Blog Alliance for my honest review and have discovered a new treasure in Courtney's writing. You can't help but be swept away into the story and thus the reason for giving this debut novel a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. I can't wait for the next novel by this amazing and talent author. ( )