Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for this ARC.

Ruth Winters is about 70 years old (there are contradictions about her age throughout the novel), lives in Minneapolis and hasn't spoken to her three years younger sister Veronica in years until she gets phoned up by her one day out of the blue and asked to drive her to chemo as she has incurable liver cancer.

Ever after this shock revelation, Ruth is very reluctant to help her sister out. There is deep-seated resentment about the past between the sisters. They barely tolerate each other and in a lot of flashbacks we learn why.

Ruth studied art and wanted to become a museum curator, but after a car accident killing her mother and injuring her father, she became his carer for eight years, then an accountant for 37 years and wife to Charles for 15 years. She has always looked after others without help (Veronica simply disappeared, lived her life and went through four husbands) and no one has looked after her. She is now widowed, retired, isolated and set in her ways, not knowing much about modern electronics.

She has no children but looks after some neighbours' kids in her spare time. At the same time, old crush Martin Daly tries to get her to attend their 50th high school reunion, which she resists for the longest time, finding the idea simply preposterous.

This is a story about family, grief, forgiveness and second chances that is as predictable as it is repetitive. It also felt simplistic, with a woman facing death suddenly acknowledging what she did to her sister all these years ago and apologising profusely.

The reunion of the feuding sisters should have been very emotional but it felt flat, with a sort of abrupt and open ending. With no offence to the author, I was left questioning whether his perspective was the right one for an elderly woman's story.

For example, he labels what she does as simple babysitting but babysitters don't take 3-4 different children at a fixed time every week into their own home, feed and even educate them. That's what childminders do but as Ruth doesn't seem to have any qualifications, certificates or a registration, she is probably doing it illegally. She simply doesn't get rumbled because the author doesn't care about it or even understands the difference.

There were too many long flashbacks interrupting the present story, with not all of them being of importance, leaving no time for the present story to fully develop. Sometimes I was confused as to where in time I was, as the story hops around in time, from 50 years back to the present to 20 years back etc. 

I liked Ruth as a character, and the fact she loved her niece Chloe so much. She has quite an acerbic tongue but I like people who say what they think. Her sister has treated her terribly in the past, but nevertheless, her life journey was of her own making. She chose to look after her father and she chose to marry Charles. 

There seems to be a surge of books about elderly characters rediscovering life, like "A Man Called Ove" or "The Last List of Mabel Beaumont", and they are mostly very good. This one has still a bit of work to do to catch up, but it's not a bad read, just a "we've been here before" one.