Where Hope Begins by Catherine West

Where Hope Begins by Catherine West starts out with Savannah Barrington in the middle of a messy, difficult life. Her world has been shaken when her husband of more than twenty years has an affair and leaves her. Life in their house feels so very lonely that she leaves for her parents' lake house in the Berkshires. Savannah becomes fast friends with the next door neighbors--an elderly woman with a lot of wisdom, her nephew, and his daughter. Through their friendship, Savannah learns that she is has a purpose and is worthy of God's love. Then, as life happens, Savannah must face challenges from the past and face all that the future holds.

West deals with some tough issues in Where Hope Begins--adultery, a child's death, suicide--and the challenges of living with the results of those events. I don't want to share any spoilers in my review so I want to stop there. I did think she handled the subjects well. I read the book in one day. I giggled in a couple of places and I shed a few tears with the characters. As a whole, I thought it was well-written and I enjoyed the characters. Family relationships have challenges in real life and West portrays a real family with big challenges and how they deal with them. At the end of the book she shares in the epilogue about how she prayed for her readers and how she felt God wanted her to write this story that she didn't really want to write. Where Hope Begins would be a good book club discussion book and she offers some good discussion questions in the back of the book.

I received this book from Thomas Nelson Publishers. I was not required to write a positive review.