The House With The Wraparound Porch (+ GIVEAWAY!!)

It's been awhile since I shared a book review (I've been 'busy' on Netflix), but I have a lovely book for you today.  Make sure to read to the end to enter to win your own copy!

Summary from MaryPatHyland.com: Along an elm-canopied boulevard rising from a quaint Finger Lakes village stands a magnificent Queen Anne-style house. 

In the summer of 1920, when Mame McGrath and her family move in across the street, she notices a catatonic young man rocking on its wraparound porch. Mame, a newly hired elementary school teacher, proclaims boldly that she can, and will, restore this man’s psyche—devastated by a drowning in Keuka Lake. 

What she doesn't anticipate is that he and this house will become the center of her life. The House With the Wraparound Porch weaves a riveting tale of the four generations to whom this home becomes more than a shelter from life’s storms. It houses their memories of triumphs and failures, of joys and sorrows that ripple across nine decades. Though many will move on, this house will always be a part of them, because it resides always within the deep heart's core.

The REAL house with the wraparound porch!

Review:
(Disclosure: I was lucky enough to receive this book from the author for review through LibraryThing.com)

This is a lovely book about family, legacy, and the little secrets that we keep from the people we love most.

Although there are quite a few characters to try to keep track of, I liked them all (with the exception of Mara - she just seemed a little too eager to please and fit in for my taste). In fact, I felt like each generation could've had their own book because they all lived the kind of lives that are seemingly 'normal', while underneath there are all kinds of fascinating scandal, intrigue, mystery, and drama.

What I really liked in the book is how the author didn't stick to a traditional way of telling a story from multiple viewpoints.  I think many authors would've devoted a chapter to each character's viewpoint and continually flipped between them all.  Mary Pat manages to seamlessly intertwine the lives and perspectives within chapters and does so without confusion and without jarring the reader.

As each generation passes on in the book it brought to mind my own family.  I know one or two of the family 'secrets', but I wonder just how many more have been buried forever.

Kueka Lake - Where the story takes place

Want to win your own copy of this book?  Mary Pat Hyland has been kind enough to provide an extra e-copy of the book for one lucky Etcetorizer!  Just fill in the Rafflecopter widget below and make sure to check back here next week to see if you won~

This giveaway is open world wide! (Void where prohibited)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You can learn more about this author and find her other books HERE~