Julie's Review: It's You

Author: Jane Porter
Series: None
Publication Date: June 2, 2015
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 336
Obtained: publisher via Suzy Missirlian
Genre:  Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction
Rating: 4.25/5
Bottom Line: Great characters and learned something new about WWII in the process
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab!

Summary: In the wake of a tragedy that tore her life down to the foundations, Dr. Alison McAdams has lost her way. So when she’s summoned to Napa to care for her ailing father, she’s not sure she has anything to offer him—or anyone else.What Ali finds in Northern California wine country is a gift—an opportunity to rest, and distance from her painful memories. Most unexpectedly, she finds people who aren’t afraid of her grief or desperate for her to hurry up and move on. As Ali becomes part of her father’s community, makes new friends of her own, and hears the stories of a generation who survived the Second World War, she begins to find hope again. In a quest to discover the truth about another woman’s lost love, she sets off on a journey across oceans and deep into history. And in making sense of that long-ago tragedy, Ali is able to put together the broken pieces of her heart and make new choices that are right for her. ~amazon.com

Review: It's You surprised me in a great way. I went in thinking I'd get a good chick-lit book with some serious undertones but wow was it so much more! Ali is easy to like. It is easy to feel her pain and to want her to move on. It is also easy to understand why she can't quite let go.

Ali decides to take a break from her life in Scottsdale to visit her dad in Napa Valley. Both of them are feeling the loss of the person that held them together, Ali's mom. Ali doesn't quite know where to start with her dad. She's never felt that important to him, her mom was the buffer. Ali finds that her dad is adjusting to living his life in a retirement community and that he's made friends there. He still holds on to the house that he and Ali's mom bought to retire in with her car in the garage.

While Ali spends time with her dad she meets Edie. Edie is a hard nut to crack. She's prickly and rude. Ali doesn't quite know what to make of her plus they bump heads quickly and often. Something makes Edie confide in Ali and something continues to pull Ali towards Edie. When Edie tell Ali of her life in Berlin during the Second World War; Ali wants to go to Berlin to try to find out about what happened to Franz.

While It's You is mainly about Ali's story of healing and learning to love again, it is through Edie's story that she is able to do that. It is only on her trip to Berlin that she begins to forgive herself and to live again.

While there is a prospect of love for Ali in the future, Ms. Porter never made it about that in the book. It was about these 2 women who had two lifetimes of hurt between each other and yet were looking to believe in love and life again.

I found myself engrossed in both of these women's stories and wanted to see how both their journeys would end up. I definitely recommend It's You for anyone who likes novels that have a bend towards WWII.

 Google+