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2024. Recently-engaged city girl Cora is new to the small town of Hickory Falls. Still adjusting to the change in pace, she's delighted when she stumbles upon a quaint estate sale. Drawn in by the knickknacks, she buys a jar of colorful baubles and is surprised to find two rings at the bottom of the jar. When she innocently sets out to find the original owner of the rings, she instead stumbles upon a decades-old mystery.
1953. Clarity Grey should've known better than to get involved with a married man, but their connection went too deep to ignore. When he divorces his wife for her, they marry, and she gets the family life she's always dreamed of, with a new stepdaughter and a child of her own. But just as suddenly, her new life slips out of her hands when she simply vanishes, never to be seen or heard of again.
Clarity is labeled as flaky and a homewrecker, so nobody in town takes her disappearance seriously—until Cora, seventy years later.
This engrossing novel exposes one family's secrets and the twisted lies that are hidden in small towns.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 10, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798855594997
- File size: 235484 KB
- Duration: 08:10:35
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 30, 2024
This slow-moving cozy from West (a pseudonym for Good Will author Tiffany Killoren) finds bride-to-be Cora stumbling on a decades-old mystery when she moves to the Midwest with her fiancé. With her future mother-in-law commandeering the wedding plans , Cora has plenty of free time to explore Hickory Falls, her new hometown. At an estate sale, she comes across a jar filled with colorful baubles and, on impulse, buys it. Amid the old marbles and buttons, Cora discovers a wedding ring, and in her quest to find out whose it was, she stirs up tensions among Hickory Falls’ longtime residents. The ring may have belonged to Clarity Shaw, whose story unfolds in alternating chapters: in the early 1950s, Clarity disappeared from Hickory Falls, sparking rumors that she was a witch, and that she left her husband for a much richer man. Cora, unconvinced by the urban legends, grows obsessed with finding out what really happened to Clarity. Unfortunately, the baggy narrative doesn’t reflect the intensity of Cora’s obsession, burning too many pages on wedding planning and overly detailed exposition. Flat characters don’t help matters. This misses the mark. Agent: Stephanie Hansen, Metamorphosis Literary. -
Award-winning Devon Sorvari uses all her considerable narration talents to bring to life this story about a small town with big secrets. Cora, an affable but rather bland heroine, finds wedding rings in a jar of baubles she buys at an estate sale and seeks to find their owners. This is a dual-timeline mystery, and listeners are pulled back to 1953, a story of forbidden love, and the mystery of what happened to Clarity, a member of a prominent family. While the pace of the narrative is slow and encumbered by many lackluster similes, the story itself is interesting and the ending suspenseful. Sorvari convincingly presents the passions of the characters in a voice that is steady and balanced. D.L.G. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
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