Honeysuckle Season

 

In the present day, this is the story of Libby McKenzie, a single wedding photographer coming off three miscarriages and a divorce and hired by Elaine Carter Grant, the owner of the generations-old Woodmont estate to record the estate's renovation. In the 1940's wartime past, this is primarily the story of Olivia Carter, Elaine's grandmother, and Sadie Thompson, a young, spirited teenage girl hired by Olivia's husband Edward to drive his wife where she needs to go. Thrown into the mix are the Reese family: Margaret, who cooks and cares for the house, her widowed son, Colton, who lives on the estate and cares for the grounds and buildings, and a healthy dose of other characters who keep things interesting. It's the story of how all these people interconnect that makes this book such an enjoyable read.

My best advice for this book? Pull out a notebook and start writing down the character names and who they are early on, because it's a puzzle of inter-connectedness that you're going to be putting together to the very end. Personally, I loved every second of it, and unpeeling the layers was delightful. I don't think all the family connections were terribly difficult to figure out, but I don't know that the reveals were meant to be those shocking "a-ha!" moments. Rather than playing like a mystery, it was a gently unfolding story with charm and intrigue, full of (mostly) likeable characters and back-and-forth story lines that wove past and present together seamlessly to reveal the whole picture. They're different stories, but it reminded me so much of the feeling I had when I watched Fried Green Tomatoes for the first time, as the story played between the past and present. If you've ever read that book or seen the movie, my mind thought of Olivia Carter and Sadie Thompson a lot like I though of Ruth and Idgie, and the special friendship they had.

This book has a little bit of everything: humor, drama, intrigue, mystery, romance, power dynamics, historical references, sad moments, feel good moments, and adventure. It also has some grim reminders of 1940's misogynistic viewpoints towards women/wives and societal views and behaviors towards the poor. That's not an area of history that's particularly enjoyable to revisit, but it does play some role in the events of the story. If you enjoy historical fiction and an overall warm-hearted family/friendship drama, this really is a wonderful little book.

★★★★★ ❤️