When Amy Somers loses her job as a lobbyist, she moves to Misty Willow, well aware that she’s crossing bridges she’d burned years before. With all the mistakes she’s made and the uncaring things she’s done–even to her own family–she can hardly believe that happiness will find her, especially when Gabe Kendall, her first crush and her first kiss, rides back into her life atop a buckskin mare.
A former Marine, Gabe is at loose ends after serving a prison sentence for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He sees beyond Amy’s hard exterior to the girl he once knew and loved, and he longs to see her open her heart. Yet with his vision clouded by shame for his past and fears about the future, he finds it difficult to see the path ahead.
But the memory of that long-ago kiss just may have the power to reignite a romance that brings out the best in both of them.
My Thoughts: There’s something gratifying about reading the redemption story of a previous bad boy or in this case a bad girl. What Hope Remembers is a satisfying conclusion to the Misty Willow series. I only wish I had found time to read the first book of the series. While you can understand the stories easily enough if you read them out of order, there is a family drama that is building and evolving through out each of the three novels. Readers will appreciate Amy’s happy ending more if they had more experience with her devious history.
For me, the story took too long to really take off. The characters are wonderfully flawed and you can’t help but feel for them as they navigate their fresh starts, but I would have liked more tension throughout the story. Aside from that, it’s a beautifully written story. I appreciate the way Alexander was able to craft characters who felt, responded, and appeared to be real and not fictionalized.
Rating and Recommendation: I’m giving What Hope Remembers 4 stars and recommending it, and the entire series, to anyone who enjoys Christian Contemporary or Christian Fiction with real-to-life characters.
~I received a copy from Revell. I was not compensated for this review. All thoughts are my own.
Christian Author: A.M. Heath 