Books & Spoons Review for HEAVEN ADJACENT by Catherine Ryan Hyde

6/6/2018

From New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde comes a bittersweet novel about healing old wounds and finding a new place to call home…

Roseanna Chaldecott spent her life as a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan. But when her best friend and law partner dies suddenly, something snaps. Unsure of her future, Roseanna heads upstate on one tank of gas and with no plans to return.

In the foothills of the Adirondacks, Roseanna discovers the perfect hideout in a ramshackle farm. Its seventy-six acres are rich with possibilities and full of surprises, including a mother and daughter squatting on the property. Although company is the last thing Roseanna wants, she reluctantly lets them stay.

Roseanna and the young girl begin sculpting junk found around the farm into zoo animals, drawing more newcomers—including her estranged son, Lance. He pleads with Roseanna to return to the city, but she’s finally discovered where she belongs. It may not provide the solitude she originally sought, but her heart has found room for much more.

While Pay It Forward is one of my favorite movies, reading Allie And Bea shattered my mind, so it was no wonder I nearly jumped from joy when this book landed in my hands. And once again, I am sitting here, humbled and in awe by a brilliant story, the clever plotting, and the characters whom will stay with me, destinies and lives that touched my heart, life-lessons that had a profound impact on me. Such an inspiring, uplifting, real, and raw story about life, priorities, relationships, family, and friends.
At first, I wondered why the timeline was chopped up and the story went back and forth within three to four years, but as the story unfolds, it all starts to make sense, and I turned to appreciate it being presented as it was, so I could understand the nuances and tones of the events.
Roseanna Chaldecott's struggle to find peace, to realize her true life goals, her needs, the bare necessities she needed to be happy, and the priorities she would and could set in her life, is a journey and a battle that will make the reader evaluate and ponder on their own life as well, if they allow the story to touch their minds and hearts.
Her relationships have always been distant, keeping people at the arm's length, even her son. The patching of the most important connection in her life, to Lance, while finding her true self, was eye-opening and inspiring. The story shows repeatedly, how people are capable of change, or refind themselves when the core values are recognized and set in place.
What do you really need to be happy? How much material things do you really need to live a satisfying life? Are things, success, being right, winning the argument, being the best more important than inner peace, meaningful relationships, deep connection to the people surrounding you? Contentment, joy, and peace of mind, or being busy, dealing, and wheeling through life?
Each one of the cast and crew in the book contributes with their unique stories, their unique way of life and living, their character, highlighting some of the major characteristics in most of us.
This story gives hope, it encourages to look deep inside and embrace what you find. It reassures that there is still goodness in people, it cheers you to re-define what makes you satisfied in life, what family means to you, and how happiness is not tight to the material possessions.
If read with an open mind, this heartening story just might change your way of thinking or at least give you a new aspect to the outlook of life.
~ Five Spoons!

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of more than 30 published and forthcoming books, including THE WAKE UP, ALLIE AND BEA, SAY GOODBYE FOR NOW, LEAVING BLYTHE RIVER, ASK HIM WHY, WORTHY, THE LANGUAGE OF HOOFBEATS, TAKE ME WITH YOU, WHEN I FOUND YOU, WALK ME HOME, and DON'T LET ME GO.

An avid hiker, traveler, equestrian, and amateur photographer, she has released her first book of photos, 365 DAYS OF GRATITUDE: PHOTOS FROM A BEAUTIFUL WORLD.

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