I’m totally delighted today to be joining the blog tour for the latest book from Faith Hogan, The Gin Sisters’ Promise, and sharing my publication day review. Published today as an ebook by Aria Fiction, it’s now available for kindle via Amazon and also for Kobo: the audiobook will follow on 1st August, but paperback readers – sorry everyone! – will need to wait until May 2023 (both formats available for pre-order). My thanks to Ayo Okojie at Aria for the invitation and support – and for my advance e-copy, provided via netgalley.
I suspect many may have discovered Faith Hogan’s wonderful books when they read her last, The Ladies’ Midnight Swimming Club – I did say that it left me lost for words, but I did manage to find enough of them to share a review (you’ll find it here). But if it really was your first, I do hope you’ve gone back to read her other five – I’ve loved her books from the very beginning, and I couldn’t be more delighted that others are now adding her to their “favourite authors” list too. You’ll find reviews here on Being Anne of all the others – My Husband’s Wives, Secrets We Keep, The Girl I Used to Know, What Happened to Us? and The Place We Call Home. In fact, if you look more closely, you might find that I’ve sometimes shared my review more than once – I adore her books, and can never resist adding my voice to every new tour. I knew I’d love this one as soon as I saw the cover (well done Aria – isn’t it glorious?!).
Let’s take a closer look…
Three estranged sisters. Six months to come back together.
When Georgie, Iris and Nola’s mother died and their father disappeared into his grief, the sisters made a pact: they would always be there for one another, no matter what.
Now, decades later, they haven’t spoken for years and can barely stand to be in the same room. As his health declines, their father comes up with a plan to bring them back to one another. In his will, he states that before they can claim their inheritance, they must spend six months living together in their childhood home in the village of Ballycove, Ireland, and try to repair their broken relationships.
As the months progress, old resentments boil over, new secrets threaten to come out and each sister must decide what matters more: their pride, or their family. Can they overcome their past and find a way to love each other once more?
How wonderful to be back in Ballycove again – it’s the third time I’ve visited, and it always feels like coming home. And it used to be a happy home for the Delahaye sisters – Georgie, Iris and little Nola – until they lost their mother twenty-eight years ago and their father withdrew in his grief, making them a close unit who always looked after each other. In the intervening years, they went their separate ways, their closeness blown apart by resentments and misunderstandings – and the prospect of returning home for their father’s funeral isn’t one any of them is looking forward to. Each of them has considerable problems, their seemingly perfect lives rather falling apart, and they each plan to keep that hidden – but when their father’s will stipulates that they must spend six months together in Ballycove, in the hope that they can address their differences, before they’ll be able to walk away with their inheritance, it’s clear there are difficult times ahead.
The absolute joy about this book is in the handling of the relationship between the three sisters – very real and sometimes painful as long-held resentments come to the surface, slowly and steadily changing into something quite different as they find themselves again and the bonds that once held them together. Each of the women touches your heart in their own way, their paths through life to date and the way they handle their enforced stay at the family home – the way they each find their own way through is just wonderful, each of them slowly unfolding and finding what makes them happy.
Despite the initial hissing and spitting, there’s a great deal of love in this book – and the author’s gentle and sensitive telling of their story makes it one that fills you with warmth and feel-good. The emotional content is exceptionally well-handled – with a real feeling of authenticity – and although relatively slow-paced it was a book I found impossible to set aside, reading it in a single glorious sitting, entirely immersed in the women’s lives.
Written from the heart, and tremendously uplifting – I really loved this book, and recommend it really highly.
About the author
Faith lives in the west of Ireland with her husband, four children and two very fussy cats. She has an Hons Degree in English Literature and Psychology, has worked as a fashion model and in the intellectual disability and mental health sector.
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