Blog Tour: I'll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos

I'll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos
Published by William Morrow on March 6th 2018
Pages: 320
Goodreads

The New York Times bestselling author revisits the characters from her beloved novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in this captivating, beautifully written drama involving family, friendship, secrets, sacrifice, courage, and true love for fans of Jojo Moyes, Elin Hilderbrand, and Nancy Thayer

On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming, yet overly possessive, fiancé.

Three weeks later, Clare learns that Edith has died—and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare. Though the former guest house has been empty for years, Clare feels a deep connection to Edith inside its walls, which are decorated with old photographs taken by Edith and her beloved husband, Joseph.

Exploring the house, Clare finds two mysterious ledgers hidden beneath the kitchen sink. Edith, it seems, was no ordinary woman—and Blue Sky House no ordinary place. With the help of her mother, Viviana, her surrogate mother, Cornelia Brown, and her former boyfriend and best friend, Dev Tremain, Clare begins to piece together the story of Blue Sky House—a decades-old mystery more complex and tangled than she could have imagined. As she peels back the layers of Edith’s life, Clare discovers a story of dark secrets, passionate love, heartbreaking sacrifice, and incredible courage. She also makes startling discoveries about herself: where she’s come from, where she’s going, and what—and who—she loves.

Shifting between the 1950s and the present and told in the alternating voices of Edith and Clare, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is vintage Marisa de los Santos—an emotionally evocative novel that probes the deepest recesses of the human heart and illuminates the tender connections that bind our lives.

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for I’ll Be Your Blue Sky by Marisa de los Santos. For whatever reason, I didn’t read this book when it was first released but, after reading the reviews, I had a ton of FOMO. I was very excited to be asked to join the blog tour and finally read the book I’d been reading so much about. I was definitely not disappointed!

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is one of those books that overlaps a few genres including contemporary fiction, women’s fiction, historical fiction, mystery, and even a little (GASP!) romance. This sort of thing often sounds like a good idea but it can be so difficult to execute that the finished product feels like a mish-mosh, leaving the reader frustrated and/or confused. Not the case with this book! Marisa de los Santos tells the story with straightforward yet elegant language that draws the reader in immediately.

As for the plot, I don’t want to give away much beyond what can be read in the blurb. I will say that I loved the overarching theme of many several character’s struggles, both logistical and moral, to put the needs of others above their own. I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is also a not-so-subtle reminder of the many difficulties and little rights women in pre-women’s lib era of the 1950’s had. These aspects satisfied my need for a good “meaty” read while the romance and mystery balanced out the book and kept it from becoming too heavy. Many of you know that romance is not my thing, however, I loved it in this book! I wouldn’t have changed it a bit. It wasn’t the flowers and bubble bath nonsense that I find so gratuitous and annoying. It was actually quite substantive and realistic. Bravo!

Overall, I found I’ll Be Your Blue Sky to be a page-turning read full of hope and courage. Though I haven’t read any of Maria de los Santos’s other books, I certainly look forward to doing so.

Marisa de los Santos

About Marisa de los Santos

Maria de los Santos is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning poet with a PhD in literature and creative writing. She lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her family.