When Beck Holiday lost her father in the North Tower on 9/11, she also lost her memories of him. Eighteen years later, she’s a tough New York City cop burdened with a damaging secret, suspended for misconduct, and struggling to get her life in order. Meanwhile a mysterious letter arrives informing her she’s inherited a house along Florida’s northern coast, and what she discovers there will change her life forever. Matters of the heart only become more complicated when she runs into handsome Bruno Endicott, a driven sports agent who fondly recalls the connection they shared as teenagers. But Beck doesn’t remember that either.
Decades earlier, widow Everleigh Applegate lives a steady, uneventful life with her widowed mother after a tornado ripped through Waco, Texas, and destroyed her new, young married life. When she runs into old high school friend Don Callahan, she begins to yearn for change. Yet no matter how much she longs to love again, she is hindered by a secret she can never share.
Fifty years separate the women but through the power of love and miracle of faith, they each find healing in a beautiful Victorian known affectionately as The Memory House.
I’ve been so looking forward to reading The Memory House, and it proved to be just as fantastic as promised! I love dual timeline stories, and Hauck is a master of them. She excels at creating characters who are alike just enough for the reader to notice their similarities but more than different enough to keep and hold your attention.
The very premise of The Memory House is fascinating. The very point of the Memory House is to preserve and remember the past, which contrasts with the two characters who have both experienced severe memory loss due to trauma. Hauck kept me in suspense about who would remember what when, and I loved trying to figure it out.
That’s the only thing about the story I didn’t like – I wanted more of it! Beck’s story is well fleshed out by the time you turn the last page, but there are more holes in Everleigh’s story that I liked. I wanted to know so much more! The reader is able to fill in a few by piecing different parts of the story together, but Everleigh was such a great character that she could easily have been the main character of her own complete story. I wanted to know more about how she dealt with the problems that she faced later in her own life story, and while you get the ultimate ending, I think that those missing pieces could have been amazing to know.
I really liked Beck, too. She’s not your typical Christian fiction main character as she has a past that keeps confronting her throughout the story, but that’s one of the things I liked about her. She doesn’t run from her past, and Hauck uses it to grow Beck throughout the story in many ways. She’s also a super tough lead, and that’s my absolute favorite kind.
The spiritual lessons learned by the characters in the story vary, but forgiveness is a definite theme. It shows up in a myriad of ways and forms, but it can be found all through the story, and I really like the way that Hauck uses it.h
The Memory House is a great read for your spring break or summer vacation. You won’t want to miss Hauck’s latest!
I received a free copy of this book from the author. All opinions are my own.
That sounds like a book I’d love. Thanks so much for sharing with us at Encouraging Hearts and Home. Pinned.