Blueprints
Author: Barbara Delinsky
Publisher: St Martin’s Press
Page Count: 416 pages
Format: E-Arc
Source: Publisher/NetGalley
Genre: Woman’s Fiction, Literary Fiction, Romance
Release Date: 6/2/2015
Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work-and what to do when they break.
Caroline MacAfee is a skilled carpenter, her daughter Jamie, a talented architect. Together they are the faces of Gut It!, a home renovation series on local public television. Caroline takes pride in her work, and in the way she connects with the show’s audience. But when she is told the network wants her daughter to replace her as host-the day after Caroline’s fifty-sixth birthday-she is devastated. The fallout couldn’t come at a worse time.
For Jamie, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his new wife die in a car accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Accustomed to organization and planning, she is now grappling with a toddler who misses his parents, a fiancé who doesn’t want the child, a staggering new attraction, and a work challenge that, if botched, could undermine the future of both MacAfee Homes and Gut It!
For Caroline, hosting Gut It! is part of her identity. Facing its loss, she feels betrayed by her daughter and old in the eyes of the world. Her ex-husband’s death thrusts her into the role of caregiver to his aging father. And then there’s Dean, a long-time friend, whose efforts to seduce her awaken desires that have been dormant for so long that she feels foreign to herself.
Who am I? Both women ask, as the blueprints they’ve built their lives around suddenly need revising. While loyalties shift, decisions hover, and new relationships tempt, their challenge comes not only in remaking themselves, but in rebuilding their relationship with each other.
* Arc provided by the Publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review *
First Impression: Excellent writing, superb storytelling, with an immediate connection to the characters and their conflicts. This is a story with a lot of heart, a lot of emotion, and it tugs at the soul.
I loved this book! Barbara Delinsky delivers a fantastic, emotionally satisfying read that draws readers in and makes them care, think, and question every decision and action the characters make, because each one of their decisions come with conflict and struggle. I was swept away by Caroline and Jamie’s story, by their bond, by their conflicts, and by their journey.
Blueprints grabbed me by the heart and wouldn’t let go. It is an amazing, extremely well-written story with extraordinary, real-to-life characters that readers will genuinely like and want to be happy.
If you like books where good people struggle with change and where a close family faces strife while hope lingers on the horizon, read this book. It’s a dynamite, emotionally complex novel that makes for the perfect evening, weekend, summer, or beach read. It’s a beautiful piece of fiction, of character study, that I highly, highly recommend.
Barbara Delinsky, author of BLUEPRINTS (2015), SWEET SALT AIR (2013), ESCAPE (2011), NOT MY DAUGHTER (2010), WHILE MY SISTER SLEEPS (2009), THE SECRET BETWEEN US (2008), and FAMILY TREE (2007), has written more than twenty-one bestselling novels with over thirty million copies in print. She has been published in twenty languages worldwide. Barbara’s fiction centers upon everyday families facing not-so-everyday challenges. She is particularly drawn to exploring themes of motherhood, marriage, sibling rivalry, and friendship in her novels.
A lifelong New Englander, Barbara earned a B.A. in Psychology at Tufts University and an M.A. in Sociology at Boston College. As a breast cancer survivor who lost her mother to the disease when she was only eight, Barbara compiled the non-fiction book Uplift: Secrets From the Sisterhood of Breast Cancer Survivors, a handbook of practical tips and upbeat anecdotes. She donates her proceeds from the sale of this book to her charitable foundation, which funds an ongoing research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Barbara enjoys knitting, photography, and cats. She also loves to interact with her readers through her: Website | Facebook | Twitter