Author: Sofia Lundberg
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Date: March 23, 2021
Book Description: By age 50, Elin Boals has created for herself a perfect life: her wildly successful business as Manhattan’s preeminent fashion photographer is flourishing. Her handsome, patient husband is devoted to her; her teenaged daughter, Alice, has been accepted to the ballet academy of her dreams. But then Elin receives an innocuous looking envelope. Folded inside is a star-chart, with an address written by a familiar hand.
Shaken, Elin begins to have startling flashbacks, to a life very different from the childhood in a Paris bookstore that she has so lovingly recounted to Alice. In these images, a poverty-stricken little girl cares for her two ragged baby brothers, laughing with her family on the good days, sheltering them from her mother’s sadness and her father’s wrath on the bad days. Elin also remembers vivid walks with a young classmate, Fredrik, whose steadfast friendship and starlit confidences shaped her young life. As Elin becomes consumed by these memories, though, her New York life begins to crumble dramatically. Finally, her family’s troubling questions drive her to face, at last, the brutal secret from her past.
At once a heartwarming family story and a page-turning mystery, A Question Mark Is Half a Heart traces a surprising journey across continents to reconciliation, and toward finding a true sense of home.
Rating: 5 Stars
Review: This was the book that I didn’t realize I need to read, I loved it so much. The story of Elin Boals, a career driven women, recent empty nester and struggling with her marriage is so beautifully told with a story that you can absolutely not put down.
When we meet Elin, she has received a mysterious envelope, that really throws her. The book written in 2017 and with memories of her past starting in 1979. This is absolutely not a high point in her life, but when her husband forces her hand she starts to re-evaluate her past which is absolutely threatening her present and future.
This was a beautiful novel, and I found myself rooting for Elin the entire time. She will make you angry, but when you realize she is struggling with her past, you will totally want to help her move on from whatever is haunting her. Simply, just read this one.
Thank you NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Obsessed Bookaholic 