A Small Indiscretion by Jan Ellison

source: Free review copy courtesy of Library Thing
title: A Small Indiscretion
author: Jan Ellison Twitter
published: Random House (January 20, 2015)
genre: fiction
pages: 318
first line: London, the year I turned twenty.
rated: 4 out of 5 stars 

blurb:
At nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in a washed-out California town for a London winter of drinking and abandon. Twenty years later, she is a San Francisco lighting designer and happily married mother of three who has put her reckless youth behind her. Then a photo from that distant winter in Europe arrives inexplicably in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened.

Past and present collide, Annie’s marriage falters, and her son takes a car ride that ends with his life hanging in the balance. Now Annie must confront her own transgressions and fight for her family by untangling the mysteries of the turbulent winter that drew an invisible map of her future. Gripping, insightful, and lyrical, A Small Indiscretion announces the arrival of a major new voice in literary suspense as it unfolds a story of denial, passion, forgiveness—and the redemptive power of love.

my thoughts:
I found A Small Indiscretion to be a quiet and intense novel centered around a woman whose actions in her youth continue to carry on into her adulthood and affect not only herself, but her loved ones also.

The story goes to and from past and present as you are drawn into Annie Black’s life. Author Jan Ellison slowly drew me in, I did not know where Annie’s story was going but I wanted to find out.

Annie is a married mother whose son is in a horrible car accident and is in a medically induced coma when she begins to write down her story, which is essentially a confession, for him.

Sweet Forgiveness by Lori Nelson Spielman

source: free review copy courtesy of amazon vine
title: Sweet Forgiveness
author: Lori Nelson Spielman twitter
first line: It went on for one hundred sixty-three days.
pages: 355
published: 2015
genre: fiction/womens fiction
rated: Moving and beautifully written.

blurb:
#1 international bestselling author Lori Nelson Spielman follows The Life List with Sweet Forgiveness, in which a woman’s receipt of two “forgiveness stones” sends her searching for atonement

The Forgiveness Stones craze is sweeping the nation—instantly recognizable pouches of stones that come with a chain letter and two simple requests: to forgive, and then to seek forgiveness. But New Orleans’ favorite talk show host, Hannah Farr, isn’t biting. Intensely private and dating the city’s mayor, Hannah has kept her very own pouch of Forgiveness Stones hidden for two years—and her dark past concealed for nearly two decades. But when Fiona Knowles, creator of the Forgiveness Stones, appears on Hannah’s show, Hannah unwittingly reveals on air details of a decades-old falling out with her mother.

Spurned by her fans, doubted by her friends, and accused by her boyfriend of marring his political career, Hannah reluctantly embarks on a public journey of forgiveness. As events from her past become clearer, the truth she’s clung to since her teenage years has never felt murkier. Hannah must find the courage to right old wrongs, or risk losing her mother, and any glimmer of an authentic life, forever.

My thoughts:
It’s funny because last summer around this time I was reading this author’s debut novel The Life List while on vacation. The Life List was fantastic by the way.
So when I saw that Amazon Vine was offering Lori’s second novel, Sweet Forgiveness, I happily requested a copy.
The storyline follows Hannah Farr, a thirty something talk show host who receives Forgiveness Stones from a former classmate who bullied her. This same old classmate has become somewhat of a celebrity after coming up with the idea of the stones and writing a book about forgiveness. The idea behind the stones is to accept one stone and someones apology and give the second stone away to ask for forgiveness or to forgive someone else.