Love, Alice

October 1, 2016
Grief remains the strongest bond in Davis (Summer at Hideaway Key, 2015, etc.) new novel.A year after her fiances unexpected suicide, Dovie Larkin is still desperate for answers. Ignoring the concern of friends and family, Dovie is a frequent visitor at the cemetery, often bringing her lunch there. During one of these visits, she's struck by the sight of an older woman who is visibly distraught over a popular town monumenta life-sized statue known as Alices Angel. This grave has always been surrounded by an air of mysterywhy did the young maid of one of Charlestons wealthiest families warrant such an elaborate memorial in the family plot? The strangers grief at the gravesite is curious to Dovie, as Alice Tandy has been dead for more than 30 years. When the old woman drops a letter at the grave, Dovies curiosity gets the better of her and she snatches it up and reads it. The woman turns out to be Alice's estranged mother, and learning about the rift between mother and daughter, and the circumstances that led Alice to cross the sea from the Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers in England to Charleston, South Carolina, is far too compelling for Dovie to ignore. She discovers a trove of letters from Alice, somehow still tucked away in the cemeterys lost and found, and learns just why Alice earned such a grand monument after all. Dovie admits what she has learned to Dora Tandy, and together they dig into the secrets that have been buried away for years. On the topic of grief, Davis writes, It was inconvenient and intrusive, not quite contagious but the next thing to it. Though they met merely by chance, together Dovie and Dora delve into the mysteries of the past and start on the long and complicated path toward closure and healing. While Davis crafts compelling characters, her overreliance on secrets and plot gimmicks muddies the narrative.

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October 1, 2016

Dovie Larkin is the curator at the Charleston Museum of Cultural Arts, SC, but she eats her lunch at the Magnolia Grove Cemetery. It's been a year since her fiance William committed suicide, and she's hoping for answers. A major donation to the museum by the Tate family should be top priority for her, but every interaction with family scion Austin Tate ends in animosity. One day an older woman leaves a letter on the grave of Alice Tandy, a young woman who worked in the Tate household in the Sixties and is memorialized with a giant statue of a weeping angel. In a moment of madness, Dovie takes the letter and discovers the woman is Alice's mother, come all the way from England to make amends to her daughter, whom she didn't know was dead. Then other letters are unearthed in the cemetery's lost-and-found, letters Alice wrote to a child she gave birth to in 1962 at the Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers in Cornwall. VERDICT Davis's (The Secrets She Carried) tale of lost letters and the horrors of the Magdalene Laundries too soon telegraphs its secrets so that little mystery remains at book's end. Romance fans might forgive the flaws, but those lured by the suspense trope will be dissatisfied.--Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2016
Dovie Larkin knows it's not normal to spend her lunch breaks at the cemetery, but her current situation is anything but normal. Her fiance, William, killed himself two weeks before their wedding, and being near his grave is the only thing that makes her feel calm. Her boss is running out of patience, and her job is in jeopardy, but Dovie has one last chance to prove herself worthy of her museum-curator positiona huge fund-raiser with the Tates, one of the wealthiest families in Charleston. When Dovie uncovers evidence at the cemetery that links the Tates to an old local mystery, she's forced to decide if she's finally ready to move on. Davis has crafted a warm and witty novel of self-discovery, splicing in old letters written by a young woman who finds herself in equally trying circumstances. Fans of Liane Moriarty and Annie England Noblin will adore the stubbornness of Davis' heroine and the contrast between the sordid mystery and Charleston's refined high society in this perfectly paced tale of betrayal, acceptance, and the power of forgiveness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)