About:Young love means everything . . . until it leaves you
with nothing.
The summer before her senior year of high school, Laney Jacobs and her best
friend jump from a six-story beachside cliff in an attempt to impress their
boyfriends. Laney rose from the water. Her friend did not.
Six years later, when Laney’s troubled mother’s memoir hits the bestseller list
airing the family’s destructive secrets, Laney is forced to relive the trauma,
this time in the public eye. To escape the scrutiny, she seeks shelter at her
estranged grandmother’s seaside inn. But she can’t reconcile the loving woman
with the heartless parent in her mother’s book. As she looks for answers, the
ex-boyfriend who’d witnessed her darkest days reappears, stirring up both pain
and hope.
When her mother's vindictive fans threaten her grandmother's livelihood and the
lighthouse Laney has come to love, she turns to the century-old words of a
young lighthouse keeper to help her find the courage to move forward. But once
truths from the past come to light and old love finds new beginnings, will
Laney discover that forgiveness is the only way toward true healing?
My Thoughts:
In The Way Back, we have a story that really delves deep
into the familial relationships. Especially those between mother and daughter.
Laney Jacobs is a young woman who has not had an easy life. She has never met
her father and her mother, for most of Laney’s growing up years, was strung out
with whatever vise she could find. Laney felt mostly safe and loved among her
best friend Maddie and her boyfriend Jacob, until tragedy struck. Not able to
deal with life, Laney begins to self-harm.
Laney leaves her home in California and goes to Maine to
meet the grandmother she never knew, especially now, as she wants to find out
the truth about what really happened to her mother, now that her mother has
written a famous memoir about herself and the lighthouse, she grew up in. Is
what her mother says true, knowing her mother, or does her grandmother say
something else? Shocking secrets do come out.
There is another young woman’s story we get to learn about
along with Laney, written in the pages of a very old journal of a brave young
woman lightkeeper. That story as well delved into a mother and daughter
relationship and had me mesmerized along with Laney.
I really felt for Laney, the trauma she went through, even
in her childhood where she did not have a responsible parent. The shame and
guilt she is tackling with after her self-harm, it is heavy on her shoulders. I
liked how the author showed us Laney’s continuing healing process, this was
needed as the subject at times was heavy.
I never really know what I am going to get with this
author’s work. Her stories really pull me in, and even when they broach
uncomfortable subjects, she writes with empathy and hope for the
characters. I am glad that there is a
hope where Laney can experience healing in all of her relationships, find love,
and forgive herself. There are some sensitive topics broached in this novel.
I was provided a copy of this novel from the publisher. I
was not required to post a positive review and all views and opinions are my
own.
Beautiful cover
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