Dina Silver

I LOVED this book, it was truly amazing. The cover initially caught my eye but the story pulled me in and I didn't want to stop reading. I would have to say it's one of the best books I have read this year.

The story is told in the alternating points of view of Catherine and her daughter Ann Marie. Catherine married Gabriel, a Lebanese business man, and a few short months after the wedding she finds herself living in Beirut and pregnant. Shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Catherine's life with her husband changes. She is forbidden to return home to the States and even has her passport locked up. Gabriel finally allows Catherine to return home with Ann Marie, but the joy is short lived. Gabriel abducts Ann Marie and takes her back to Beirut. Ann Marie is unaware any of this happened to her as a baby and doesn't find out until she is meets with a divorce attorney who happened to know her mom.

The book focuses on family and love. I loved the story, characters and style of writing. A few tears may have been shed. I definitely recommend it and want to read more books by the author.

Thanks to NetGalley, Lake Union Publishing and the author, Dina Silver, for a free electronic ARC of this novel.… (altro)

Once I started this story about a mother and her daughter, I couldn't put it down. It was a fantastic and addictive read that asked the question - how far would you go to protect your children. The story is told in dual time lines by the mother and daughter as secrets are revealed and questions are answered about their pasts.

Ann Marie is the mother of three sons and is in the midst of an ugly divorce with a cheating and vindictive husband. Her mother, Catherine comes to help her out and has decided that she needs to share her earlier years with her daughter through the journals that she kept. When Catherine was in college, she fell in love with a businessman from Beirut, much to her rich parents disapproval and ended up living in Beirut in the early 70s when her daughter was born. Her husband refuses to allow her to see her family and locks up her passport so that she can't go back to America with her baby. I really don't want to tell any more about the plot so that readers can experience the tense times in Catherine and Ann Marie's lives. I highly recommend this book - once I started it, I didn't put it down until the end because I was so invested in the struggles in the story. This is definitely a profound story of the love between a mother and her child.… (altro)