The Sweetness of Forgetting

At thirty-six , Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her for a twenty-two year old, and her bank account is nearly depleted. Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer long gone, she’s running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen.

Now, Hope’s beloved French-born grandmother Mamie, who wowed the Cape with her fabulous pastries for more than fifty years, is drifting away into a haze of Alzheimer’s. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in Paris. And then, arming her with a scrawled list of names, she sends Hope to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery.

Hope’s emotional journey takes her through the bakeries of Paris and three religious traditions, all guided by Mamie’s fairy tales and the sweet tastes of home. As Hope pieces together her family’s history, she finds horrific Holocaust stories mixed with powerful testimonies of her family’s will to survive in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she’ll need is a dash of courage, and the belief that God exists everywhere, even in cake. . . .

My thoughts...

This is the story of a woman that escaped the holocaust and fled to America leaving her family and the love of her life, Jacob, behind. Her parents refused to believe the warning that the Jews were going to be rounded up that very night. After she left her home she asked Jacob to go back and try once again to convince her parents to flee. He never returned. Years later as her mind gives in to Alzheimers she asks her granddaughter, Hope, to find out what happened to her family.

While I enjoyed the overall search for Mamie's family I had a very hard time with the main character, Hope, who is the most negative person! Her constant negativity along with her daughter's attitude ruined the story for me. Her daughter, Annie, is a preteen whose favorite word is "whatever" which is so overused it was unreal. I did like the ending though it was bittersweet. I give this one 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I received a copy of this book free from Gallery Pocket Blog Tours in exchange for an honest review.