Blessings

Blessings by Anna Quindlen

I have no idea how this book came to reside on my TBR shelf.  The price tag sticker implies that I bought it at Sam’s or Costco so I’m guessing it was an impulse buy.  In any event it’s been hanging around for years and has survived several “adult book clean-outs” where I donated most of my already read adult books or books that had just been hanging around so long that I knew I’d never read them.  I have no idea what it was about it that made me keep it around, but I’m pretty glad I did.  It was an enjoyable, fast read. 

It starts off as the story of a baby born to a teenage couple.  They decide to drop the baby off at a large estate where they thought the baby would have a good life.  The book, however, is not really about the baby.  It’s about Lydia Blessings, the owner of the estate and her family secrets.  In many ways it reminded me of Family Tree in the fact that many deeply guarded secrets were discovered.   As in real life though those secrets didn’t seem as big of a deal once they were out. 

I really enjoyed this story, however the writing I wasn’t a big fan of.  Quindlen goes back and forth between the present and the past a lot and at times it was very confusing trying to figure out if the action was in the past or in the present and I found myself doing a lot of re-reading.   As much as the writing confused me, I wonder if she did it on purpose to show the confusion that existed in the characters brains – kind of like real life when your brain drifts from one topic to another.