✨Bring✨ | Borrow | Bypass

Thank you to Edelweiss & Union Square Co for the opportunity to read and review this book before it's publication date! This in no way affected my review, opinions are my own.

Review: I was really a bit blown away by this book - how it's a cozy mystery + a literary novel + a deep exploration of character all wrapped up in one.

The main character, Florrie, is a whirlwind even as she potters about the assisted living facility in her wheelchair. The life she's lived and the way she recounts it (her story shown through each of the great loves of her life) was shared so well, it feels as though you've known her your entire life. This was such a slow moving exploration of the paths we take and the lives we are given because of those choices, all while exploring the amount of life we have left to live, even as we near our nineties. (And while solving a murder to boot!)

Some quotes that I absolutely loved:

Florrie thinks, We're in this together. We all have our frustrations and sorrow at being older; we've got regrets and losses and missed opportunities, things said or not said. And she supposes that every single person in these pews has known moments in their life in which they've felt such tenderness, suddenly - at geese in flight, say, or looking at the hands of a loved one - that they've lacked the language for how they feel. We've all felt longing. We've all felt alone. ← Seriously, are you kidding me with this?? *sobs*

that love is the kind one finds in poetry or romance novels or in Hollywood films. But what of friendship? What of the deep, unshakeable love of friends? Isn't that just as wonderful? And worth the same celebration? ← I'M NOT CRYING, YOU ARE

And there have been, no doubt, ten thousand other moments in her life, that if she'd lived them slightly differently, would have meant she wouldn't be sitting here - here, with him, at this very moment, in a room that's the colour of firelight and in her toweling dressing gown. ← Stop it right now, my poor heart *sobs* *sobs again*

I kind of saw the end coming, but reading about her giving birth and having her baby taken away from her was a lot harder to read than I was anticipating, even with the hundreds of pages we had built up to that moment.