** I received an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.**There is something about the way this author writes characters. Last year, The Flat Share was such a delightful surprise that I could not wait to get my hands on this book. I was so excited when I was given the audiobook through NetGalley.Although this book does have romantic elements in it, it is not a romance. It is a book about how loss reshapes a family and all the people in it. When a close family member is no longer physically present, the family has to learn how to reshape around it. Sometimes finding who you are without that person can be very difficult. It may create a space that can never be filled.This book focuses on a family of women who have been dealt several blows. First, they lost a granddaughter, daughter, and sister and then the grandfather ran off with a dance instructor. Leena has lost her sister to cancer and has been slowly self imploding ever since. She is over working and has a panic attack in the most important presentation of her life. Her employer forces her to take a sabbatical to sort herself out. Her grandmother Eileen not only lost her granddaughter but also her husband and is finding her small hamlet not very conducive to finding love again. After a weekend together, they decide to switch lives for a time and see if they can each find what they need,I loved that this book looks at this 79 year old woman as a vibrant, sexy woman. Here is no pandering to her age. She is a full, beautifully written character who still desires and loves and makes mistakes. I loved her point of view so much.I loved that Leena has to learn to work differently in the small hamlet and also has to learn to forgive her mother. IT is really hard to be angry at a person who has died. It is much easier to blame someone you can still touch. Her journey is not an easy one but it was very well written.This book touched me in a way that is difficult to define. My family lost my uncle when I was about 3 years old and it reshaped itself around a wound that never healed. My mother, her sister and my grandparents did not talk about him much and they certainly did not talk about his death. It was just something that was always there. I often wonder who they all were before he died. I understand how that change how an entire family works.This book is beautifully written and the two main characters are fully developed women whose hopes and dreams have been knocked off track. They are not cardboard cut outs. I just really enjoy the way this author writes characters with such nuance and humanness.
