REVIEW: Take Me Back - Again

dear readers,

(I received an ARC from the NetGalley in exchange for an honest review).

SALLY MANDEL 

 is the author of seven novels: Heart and Soul (Ballantine); Out of the Blue (Ballantine); A Time to Sing (McGraw Hill/Harper-Collins); Portrait of a Married Woman (Bantam); Quinn (Delacorte/Dell); Change of Heart(Delacorte/Dell), and Take Me Back, whichwill be published by DiversionBooks in September 2013. Change of Heart was on The New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks. The film rights were sold to Columbia Pictures. 

Mandel spent two years writing for television’s Guiding Light and was awarded an Emmy in 1992. Two of her screenplays have been optioned and she is a two-time winner of the Montage/HBO Screenwriting Competition. 

She lives in New York City with her husband, and is at work on a new novel.

Sally's website: http://sallymandel.wordpress.com/

Take Me Back on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18398991-take-me-back

Take Me Back on Diversion Books: http://diversionbooks.com/ebooks/take-me-back

REVIEW: TAKE ME BACK 

Written by Sally MANDEL

genre: Literary Fiction

3.5 STARS

The matriarch Lily Adams is in the twilight years and is reflecting back on her life.  There is her granddaughter, Amy her kindred spirit and the love of her life, who rushes to be by her side when Lily takes a turn for the worse. She worries over Amy's lack of a stable relationship or career.   Stella, her only child, has never understood her mother and always takes life as it comes. She wonders if Stella will be okay and move forward in her life.  Stella's ex-husband, Steve is Lily's friend Grace's son and becomes like his mother in America. As her daughter's marriage falters she cannot help but be in her son-in-law's life.  Finally, there is her late husband, William whom she married because of his sheer determination to have her. 

Take Me Back is novel broken into smaller stories told from five characters point of view.  It spans decades giving us vignettes of Lily's life through her own stories and those most important to her.  Mandel's writing invites you in their lives as if you are a friend of the family.  The one drawback was the stories of Steve and William as they did not seem to add much to the story as a whole.  It felt almost forced rather than flowing with the women's section.  I would have liked more stories from the women and seen the men through their eyes only.  

The relationships between the three women are so rich but it felt a bit like you were just getting a taste of it when it ended. Yet overall, the ending was satisfying and left you still thinking about the three generations of women that made this family vulnerable yet strong. The sign of a good novel is that it still lingers in your mind days later.

I am looking forward to looking at Mandel's backlist of novels and trying another novel soon.

Change of Heart (1979)
Quinn (1982)
Portrait Of A Married Woman (1985)
A Time to Sing (1989)
Out of the Blue (2000)
Heart and Soul (2002)

love,
kris