Everything We Keep

When I picked up Everything We Keep by Kerri Lonsdale I expected a story about love and loss, grief, and trying to move on. But I got so much more than that. Everything We Keep turned out to be a love story wrapped in a mystery with non-stop action and suspense; I couldn’t put it down.

Aimee is stuck in time. Even though James is dead and what was to be their wedding day is now his funeral day, he doesn’t feel gone to her and she can’t let go. When a mysterious woman approaches her at the funeral and tells her James is still alive, she has to know if this is true, and if so, how he could ever have left her.

This book is amazing. It’s the first time I’ve ever found myself switching my allegiance from one man to another back and show more forth so many times. James is whom she thought she’d be with forever, but she is so drawn to Ian. I wanted her to find James alive and well, safe and sound, and pick up her happily ever after, but at the same time Ian felt so very right that I couldn’t bear the thought of her not being with him.

This book makes you like Aimee, be angry with her, think she’s incredibly brave, and that’s she’s making some very foolish decisions and is in danger of losing everything – her past and her future.

You won’t guess the ending or see the epilogue coming, and while this is one of the most unusual premises I’ve come across, it works and leads to a very satisfying conclusion. Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me the opportunity to read Everything We Keep. Kerri Lonsdale is now on my Favorite Authors list and I eagerly await her next book. show less

SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers. And some sarcasm.

This was a fairly entertaining read. I couldn't wait to finish it to see if I was the only one who was distracted by one particular aspect, so I am writing this review before I read any others. Here is the thing that distracted me: the book could have been about 20 pages shorter if the author had edited out all of the sentences that were structured like this:

[My/His/Her] [body part] [verb, past tense]
Examples: His jaw clenched. My stomach tightened. Her cheeks flushed. My heart raced.

After awhile, it became hilarious. I started to focus less on the plot and more on hooting every time I came across one of these sentences. If I turned it into a drinking game, limited just to show more eyes, I would have been smashed by Chapter 2. Eyes were almost characters unto themselves, so active were they. Here is a partial list of things that eyes got up to in this novel:

They crinkled, twinkled, shined, gleamed, danced, misted, softened, hardened, rounded, widened, and most of all, they narrowed. Oh, how they narrowed. Sometimes, more than one character�Ûªs eyes would narrow in a single scene.

So yeah, that was a big issue for me with this book, even though it was unintentionally entertaining.

Also, I contend that the author had two pretty decent ideas for a book:

Idea 1
1.) A young woman tragically loses her childhood sweetheart in a freak accident; burying him on her wedding day. She rebuilds her life and finds love with a handsome photographer.

Idea 2
2.) A young woman tragically loses her childhood sweetheart in a freak accident; burying him on her wedding day. As time goes by, she learns that her fiance was involved in shady dealings with his family‰Ûªs business; and she becomes more and more convinced that he is still alive. What happened to him?

If she stuck to Idea 1, this would have been a really nice little romance. Idea 2 would have also been a good read, but it would have needed to be MUCH more fleshed out. Jamming them together like this made the whole thing overly long and kind of ridiculous.

I would definitely give this author another chance, but I can‰Ûªt give this novel more than 3 stars for the reasons noted. show less

Holy Smokes! The first thought in my head as I put this book down for good. What a ride!
"On our wedding day, my fiance, James, arrived at the church in a casket."
What a way to begin a love story, and what a love story! Aimee and James have been together since childhood, and now he's dead; or is he? Something fishy is definitely going on- his strange family and unanswered questions leave a lot of room for doubt, even as Aimee is trying to get on with her life.
Simply asked, if you lost someone you loved, how far would you go to get them back? Simple, yet, maybe you really don't want to know. The twists are apparent, until the u- turn in this story, and wow, what a doozy.
Lonsdale reels you in and doesn't let go, her characters are show more multifaceted and the suspense and mystery of the plot's situation is riveting. You must read this book!
*I received an arc from the publisher through NetGalley for an honest review show less

Instead of a wedding, the bride, family and friends attend a funeral. The bride, Aimee, should have been marrying James. Instead, it's a day of a final goodbye. This is the beginning of "Everything We Keep" by Kerry Lonsdale. Then, a psychic says he's not dead. What? Where is he? How could this happen? Then. Aimee goes to Mexico.

This isn't a Thriller. I guess it's a Psychological Drama. Because as each page is read there is some psychosis until ultimately we're in the middle of a conspiracy. Kerry Lonsdale doesn't write this complicated novel in a way that's hard to understand. She writes "Everything We Keep" in a simple fashion. This doesn't play down the importance of decisions. It's like the significant words written in another book. show more There is a time to hold on and a time to let go. In this instance, it's James's reality in the world of Art.

I liked the psychological side of the novel and the setting. For some reason, the Mexican setting brought to mind cold cases from real newspapers about missing persons while traveling abroad. Missing versus death, death versus missing and when or should families and loved ones ever give up hope are just some of the thoughts that crossed my mind. It's a novel about family, romantic love, memories and yes, cruelty. show less

Every now and again there's a story in the news about a man or woman burying a fiance instead of marrying them. These stories are gut-wrenchingly sad and the reader has to wonder how someone goes on after such a loss. How do you build a new life from the ashes? Can you find love again? Do you even want to? Kerry Lonsdale's new novel, Everything We Keep, tackles some of these hard questions in a story of loss, love, mystery, and healing.

Aimee is sitting at her fiance James' funeral on the day they should have been getting married. Gutted by the death of the man she met at the age of twelve and had loved for nearly that long, she can't begin to imagine a life without him. And when a stranger approaches her at the funeral to tell her that show more James is alive, that he did not disappear and drown on his fishing trip in Mexico, she can't help but wonder what the truth is. Already reeling from the blow of James' death, Aimee receives further bad news when her parents tell her they've had to sell the restaurant where she is the sous chef. Suddenly nothing in her life is as she expected it to be and she must create an entirely new life of her own on her own. Even as she holds onto her memories of her life with James, she finds the courage to open a coffee shop cafe. But to start to think about Ian, an amazing photographer, as more than a friend, even if she is attracted to him, is a bridge too far. Plus there's the niggling idea, fed by a painting on a postcard from a Mexican art gallery, that James could still be alive. Aimee has to decide whether to finally move forward or to keep holding onto the past.

It is hard not to feel sorry for Aimee. She's lost so much. Her grieving is very definitely stuck at the denial stage and Lonsdale has done a nice job showing that while she's outwardly moving on, she is unable to do so emotionally. The first person narration allows the reader to feel alongside Aimee and to understand her reasoning when she has to make difficult decisions. We can feel her indecision about what comes next. The flashbacks to her pre-teen and teen years flesh out her relationship with James so it is clear not only the depth of what she's lost but also the things that she has never understood, especially about the Donato family, despite her long closeness with James. This first person perspective highlights some inconsistencies though, chief among which is Aimee's lack of urgency in following up on her gut feeling about James being alive. The novel's pacing is somewhat uneven, beginning very slowly as Aimee works through her grief but then with the final third of the book offering up all of the action and the answers that Aimee has been searching for. Some of these answers introduce pretty big, troubling, heretofore unexplored bombshells. Problems aside, the novel is a quick and easy read and will keep you turning the pages to find out the resolution. For people who enjoy reading about love, the pain and healing of letting go, and building a new life, this might just fit the bill. show less

This book is one that I will be adding to the “Have to Buy” list. You know those books that grab you after you start reading, because they start you questioning “Huh?” and “What?”? Then, after some more chapters, you go to the “Why?” and “How?” questions. Then, you get to the “What if…?” questions.
Yeah, this book does that. It grabs you, and doesn’t let go. The twists and turns thrown at you make it impossible to do anything else but read. You end up reading straight through; staying up way later than you should, because you want to get to the end just so you can get the answers to all your questions.
And that is when you know you’ve read a really good book. But what made this a Great Book is the “after show more I was done”, when I went and Googled subjects that came up in the book.
I received an e-copy of this story for my honest review.
#Netgalley #WomensFiction show less

Wow, this book threw me for a loop. I am not sure how many other books I've really enjoyed at the beginning, only to kind of hate it by the end. Rather unlike some of the other reviewers, maybe, I really liked the beginning of the book. It was billed as a mystery, and I guess there was something like that, but I expected there would be more of a thriller-type element to it. I liked that Aimee was a chef. I liked the parts where the cafe was coming together, even if I thought her concept for a cafe was kind of dumb. (The name was also uninspired.) If you told me this author wrote for a soap opera or telenovela, I'd believe you. It just seemed to throw together a bunch of things that seemed like a series of non sequiturs, with little show more character development, ostensibly in service of a series. But can a series work if people aren't interested enough after the first book to read the rest? (Obviously I'm in the minority here since the answer appears to be yes.)

Also, I want to add a content warning for abuse and rape, which is discussed in this review and takes place in the book.

I didn't like the flashback chapters. However, I don't really know what she would have done in place of them because if Aimee just told us all of this that would have undoubtedly been worse. We needed to know about James' background, to some extent, and we also needed to understand why she was so damn clingy and all. They were also supposed to help us understand James (since he was "dead"), the supposed love story between Aimee and James, and introduce us to his family since they're basically nonexistent in the present (with the occasional, brief glimpse of Thomas). But gosh I found those parts boring.

His family sucked, they were pretty one-dimensional, and some of their dynamic just didn't make any sense. James, before age 16, isn't allowed to even have female friends, at all? In what world can young boys and girls not be friends? But he can't even invite her to his birthday party (even though his parents knew they were friends, and knew they spent time together elsewhere, just not at his house--what?). The mother is a haughty, emotionally abusive wretch. The father was a physically abusive asshole. I mean we actually SEE him getting ready to beat James with his belt when he's ~17, just because he skipped a single football practice (and possibly because he went to see Aimee too). But by the later flashbacks we're supposed to see his parents love Aimee, always have, his dad is friendly... this just makes no sense. I hate the way this book pushes abuse and violence under the rug and treats them like they're no big deal. The way the abuse happened was also unexpected. Both parents did it in their own way, and it was treated as normal and rationalized it as "discipline". Again, in the early 2000s, not the 50s or 60s.

In chapter eight, they use the R word (a slur for mentally disabled people). This part of the book was supposed to have taken place somewhere around 2001, and by that time people knew it wasn't an acceptable word to use, and kids would have been scolded for using it. No, there weren't any parents in the scene, but are we to believe the kids never said it in front of their parents? Or maybe I was just an unusual kid who, if I got in trouble for something, stopped doing it? Worst of all, it added literally nothing to the plot. It was just a word that was easy for the author to use in a derogatory manner. Honestly, that doesn't say much about the author, as far as I'm concerned.

When I'm reading a book that's got a romantic thread, I really love it when you can feel a spark between the two characters. So I will give the author that--I felt that here, and could feel the instant attraction between Aimee and Ian. I like how their relationship began to develop... but it seemed odd that the guy would hang around with the hope of becoming a good friend that might eventually turn into more. It's not that they had people or friends or really things in common; it seemed strange that he'd hang around, waiting.

So, some more problems. Aimee gets a painting and goes to Mexico. It was already really silly that Aimee didn't notice the initials that Carlos used in his paintings. We know that because the author moves swiftly past it without Aimee having any internal dialog about it, as though it's something she--we?--weren't supposed to notice. It wasn't a particularly subtle or well-placed "clue". The problem is that it's too glaring a similarity for Aimee NOT to notice, given that she's been pining for her dead fiancee/best friend for almost two years. And especially since she's taken this trip to Mexico--which, by the way, is the first time she's ever been out of the country--because she is so convinced that he's still alive. The fact that she doesn't notice the initials (but we do, since it's clearly placed there for the reader's benefit) just seems like amateurish writing.

Once Imelda (Carlos/James fake half sister) begins talking to Aimee about the whole thing, she said that she named him Carlos because it means "free man" and she thought it was appropriate since his loss of memory freed him from his old life. But Thomas had told her he needed a J name because of the paintings, so she picked Jaime because it was her father's name. This is just so stupid to me. You're telling me Imelda just HAPPENED to select Jaime Carlos for independent reasons, and that name just happened to be the Spanish equivalent to James Charles--which is James' name? Come on. I'm convinced that the author (and editor, I guess) forgot this part of her own story.

"A watery smile curved her espresso face...." Twice in the book (at least) one of the Mexican characters was described as having "espresso" face or skin. Can we stop referring to black and brown people by using food-related similes and metaphors?

Ok. So this book contained a rape. Though we saw Phil act in a lecherous manner toward Aimee, and she was clearly uncomfortable with him, I was not really expecting it had happened. I thought maybe he'd try (in present day), or that it was simply from when he came on to her when he walked her home. I was really pissed that there was a rape in the book, and even more by the way it was handled afterward. Why the fuck was James worried about visiting both their parents after the proposal where she was fucking raped? I don't even know what to call it; Stockholm Syndrome? Co-dependency? Aimee calling herself "too agreeable" is an understatement. Why would you stay with a man who told you to keep your rape a secret, let alone try to fight for that man to return to you? James is one of the most disgusting characters I've ever read. I don't know if he was written this way to make sure anyone who was 'shipping James and Aimee would switch to Ian and Aimee and never look back, or what. But what the fuck kind of man asks his fiancee to keep quiet about her rape, and when she asks why it happened he says he can't tell her yet? Fuck him. And Aimee continues to talk about how James was trying to "protect her", yet he made her kep her rape a secret, didn't tell her what type of familiy she was marrying into, and didn't care about her trauma (when she wanted to take down the painting of the meadow in which she was sexually assaulted, he got angry and said that Phil wouldn't take everything from them, or something. But he wasn't the victim here.)

Speaking of Phil. He was the result of an incestuous relationship between Claire (James & Thomas' mom) and her brother? And everyone--Phil's parents, James, Thomas, and their father Edgar--all knew this and made it seem like it wasn't really a big deal (though they knew they couldn't let that be known widely).

Part of my problem (well, I guess, one of many) is the same problem I have with a lot of movies that have been coming out recently. It's like this book was written to set up the rest of the series (apparently there's three), instead of being written to be good on its own merits. I'll never know if it's good when considering the series as a whole, or if reading the rest of the series makes reading this worth it, because I'm not reading more books by this author.

OH! And I almost completely forgot some of the other stupid things in this book. So many coincidences. Lacey, the psychic that reaches out to Aimee several times to let her know that James is alive, also happens to be Laney, the psychic that found Ian when he was a child in Idaho and had been missing several days. No way. It's just too unbelievably stupid that the same psychic would happen to be in Idaho in the 90s or whatever, in order to rescue Ian, and then happen to show up in Los Gatos ~25 years later to lead Aimee to James. Ian just happens to have a mother who has dissociative identity disorder, and because he's an armchair physician, he thinks James has dissociative fugue and he's right! Lucky for Thomas that when phil attacked James, James happened to enter a fugue state so he could keep him hidden (and I don't know that is the way fugue states occur, anyway....) So these two characters encounter the same psychic decades apart, and also between the two of them know two people who have exceedingly rare and somewhat similar psychiatric disorders? Shut up. It's just too ridiculous to do anything but roll your eyes.

Why did Aimee give up James so easily, seemingly feel no further pain nor spare a thought about him just because he had married and had kids? (Another weird thing--in fewer than 10 months he'd had married and had a kid, because we know the mom was pregnant for ~9, and the kid was more than a month old.) Why did Ian take her back so easily? I mean, really. The epilogue was dumb too--seriously, authors really need to stop writing them--so 5 years later James suddenly wakes from his fugue and apparently had planned well enough for it that he'd told his oldest son that if he ever woke up confused here's the code to the safe?

So, there you have it. I downloaded the book because it was an Amazon Prime First Reads, but didn't read it sooner because I was only lukewarm about it to begin with--it seemed like the most interesting of the rather boring sounding books. I've downloaded a couple other Amazon Prime books but to be honest, having read this one puts a damper on my wanting to read the other one or two I've gotten since none of them sound particularly compelling to begin with. I read this one for my online book club, and if they don't start picking a good one soon I'll lose faith in them, too. show less