Versions of Her

Summary: On the surface, Melanie Kingstad-Keyes’s life is the picture of success. She’s a tenure track professor at a prestigious university and has a perfect husband. But a recent miscarriage has left her reeling and her marriage tenuous. Selling her family’s Lake Indigo summer home, which she hasn’t visited in fifteen years, feels like the perfect distraction from her problems. Now, she only needs to persuade her younger sister, Kelsey, to go along with her plan.
Stuck in a dead-end job, Kelsey Kingstad bounces from one doomed relationship to the next as she struggles to jumpstart her adult life. Carrying the guilt of her mother’s untimely death, Kelsey is reluctant to let go of the Victorian house filled with memories of her mom and their childhood.
When the sisters find a mysterious hidden door, Melanie and Kelsey discover that they can directly view their mother’s younger years and learn all the secrets she never shared with them. Delving into her memories is fun at first, but Melanie and Kelsey quickly uncover difficult truths, throwing their own life choices into question and making them wonder if they ever truly knew their mother. Visiting the past may help them find closure, but the cost could be steeper than they realize. 

My thoughts: A heart-warming, thought-provoking, believable fantasy book.
- Heart-warming because it talks of the great relationship between two sisters with distinctly different personalities.
- Thought-provoking because it dwells on parents as individuals, their life choices, and related sacrifices.
- Believable because of the many stories old-timers used to tell about my ancestral home. It was huge with large inter-connected buildings set in a six-acre plot; dark, dingy passages; small rooms tucked away from sight; large rooms with antique furniture; a well with steps leading into its depths; and a private pond that was far too calm to be natural. When you are grow up in such circumstances, you tend to believe rather than not.
The author, Andrea Lochen, describes the summer home, the lake, and its surroundings so well that I was able to visualize it. All the characters are well-crafted. Despite being terribly busy and reading three books at a time, I finished this fast because I wanted to know what came next. The end did not matter much to me; the journey to get there did.

Note: BookSirens gave me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.