The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season

I decided to buy this book when I saw that it was set in Michigan. Once I started, I realized that the book was so much more than the setting - it was a well written family story about three generations of women and the secrets that they kept. The story is told alternately by the three women and their secrets unfold gradually until the big secret near the end that threatens to destroy all that they've built.Hope is on the run with her ten year old daughter, Tink. They have nowhere to hide until Hope remembers her aunt's farm in Michigan. She goes with no idea of whether she'll find shelter there but she is desperate to keep her daughter safe. Her aunt Peg comes to the door, rifle in hand to see who has shown up at her isolated farm house after dark. When she finds out who it is, she invites Hope and Tink into the house and is totally shocked to see Hope's black and blue face from a recent beating. She invites them to stay for a few days which soon becomes longer as they develop a relationship with each other.Hope is in her late 20s. She's spent much of her previous life taking care of her mother as her health deteriorated. She tried to be a good mother to Tink but after her mother died, she got more depressed until she met a man who made her feel better about herself. The man was anything but good to her and she and her daughter fled into the night to get away from him. Hope needs to learn to love herself and to quit blaming herself for things in her past. Tink is 10 years old and doesn't have a lot of friends in school. She is a quiet solitaire child who was negatively affected by her mother's depression and her grandmother's death. When she arrives at the farm with her mother, she hasn't spoken in several weeks due to trauma. Peg is Hope's aunt and is the owner of Orchard House, the family farm in Michigan. Hope's mom had fled the farm at a very young age because she hated the life there with her strict parents and had never returned. Peg is an unlikable grouchy woman who appears to have no friends and not much of a life beyond the farm and the cherry crop. But is everything and everyone what they appear to be in the beginning? As the secrets are revealed, the women begin to grow closer until the final big secret comes to light. Can Peg and Hope and Tink become a real family or will the secrets that they keep from each other keep them from learning to accept each other?This is my first book by this author and after reading this, I plan to look up some of her older books. I enjoy reading about strong women - which all three of these women are even though they may not realize how strong they really are. I loved the relationship that developed between them and I enjoyed seeing Hope start to let down her barriers and begin to accept other people. I was thrilled to see Tink begin to accept life and become a fun little girl and to see Peg learn to accept her past mistakes...but will the changes stay positive or will they all fall back into their old ways? The mistakes of the past are never far behind, and soon the women find themselves fighting harder than ever for their family roots and for each other.

In The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season, Hope was a woman who had a complicated history and, when events had spiraled out of control, had decided that she needed to find some place, any place, that would be safe so that she could catch her breath and plan her next move. I can’t even imagine the strain she felt driving to an unknown place to ask an unknown woman – an aunt she has no memories of – if she and her daughter could stay there.Things were tense but also not for the reason you would think. It became clear that Peg knew more than she was letting on but I wasn’t sure, in the beginning, if that something was about Peg’s past, about Hope, or even about Hope’s mom. She wasn’t the only one holding back though, Hope was also playing all her cards close to her chest out of fear. There was quite a dance between these two characters but it was lovely, wracking, and humorous.There was one certain character who was more endearing than the rest and that also brought in a slightly romantic feeling, although I would never call this story a romance. It was more of a heightened anticipation kind of story because I knew there were tons of secrets just waiting to be revealed but the storytelling had a way of keeping them out of my grasp. Much was hinted about and danced around and I had a blast with my wonderings about what the secrets could be.There were indeed three generations of voices in this story and, at first, I wasn’t too thrilled with the point of view from Tink, Hope’s daughter. There was a high element of stress and drama surrounding Hope and Tink that I wasn’t sure if having a voice of a pre-teen was going to add a pleasant element. Tink was very angry but there was a history there that was slowly explained.Now, I am glad that this book included Hope, Peg, and Tink as main characters with their own voice because they each added interest to not only their character but to the other characters as well. I ended up absolutely adoring them all and the relationship that was developed between them was memorable and endearing. Overall, The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season was a well spun story about secrets, love, fear, and forgiveness. This was such a moving and compelling read, I absolutely highly recommend it!This review is based on a complimentary book I received from NetGalley. It is an honest and voluntary review. The complimentary receipt of it in no way affected my review or rating.

The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season is set on a cherry orchard in northern Michigan in America. Twenty-seven-year-old Hope Wright and her 10-year-old daughter Jenny (nicknamed Tink) arrive at aunt Peg’s Orchard House – an aunt she has long forgotten. Aunt Peg is not very friendly. Peg agrees to the arrangement if Hope helps with the three-week cherry harvest.The house is old and run-down, but the smell of coffee in the mornings is familiar. Hope learns that her mother used to take her to the farm when she was young. She wants to know more about her mother Denise, who died of cancer, and her father, whom she never knew. But aunt Peg doesn’t know much.Hope’s new life blossoms with the cherries as she works with a nice man called Abel Rodriguez. Tink, on the other hand, is bored on the farm. She hatches a plan to go into the room that aunt Peg keeps locked.This is a light read about three generations of women, their past partners and past secrets, and father-daughter relationships. And there are three cherry recipes at the end of the book: brioche, chutney, and jam.

Formulaic but entertaining. I think why I enjoyed this novel, was because I liked all of the main characters. Even though Hope comes off at the beginning as being a very weak woman her character develops into someone who will get stronger and stronger as she goes on. Peg is amazing, a strong old broad with issues that at times also makes her weak. Only Tink, Hope's daughter, is portrayed as being a strong personality. Despite these frailties I was drawn into the plot of the novel.