Welcome to another Weekend Read post. My featured book this week is The Sisters of Hope Square by bestselling contemporary fiction author Faith Hogan. Faith has dropped by today to tell us what inspired her to write this story. So grab yourself a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Faith.
Blurb
From the bestselling author of The Bookshop Ladies, Faith Hogan, comes a wonderfully gripping and poignant story of two sisters and their family hotel on peaceful Pin Hill Island, once a thriving family business now struggling to survive.
All Blythe Carney ever wanted was to become a hotelier and run her family’s business, the Hope Square Hotel. But fate, and her grandfather, intervened and it fell into her younger sister Rae’s lap, taking her dreams with it. Now Blythe owns Still Water House, the most exclusive guest house on Pin Hill Island, but she can’t help but feel she’s still not living the life she was meant to.
Rae Johnson had no interest in taking over the hotel, her dreams lay elsewhere, but when she ended up with the family business her sister had set her heart on, her sense of duty to continue their family legacy with her husband was too strong to ignore.
Now, fifteen years later, newly widowed Rae is struggling to keep the hotel afloat and she knows that selling it could be the final straw in her already fragile relationship with her sister.
What do you do when your sister lives the life that you’d set your heart on? And when the perfect storm is brewing, surely, it’s time to put aside the jealousy and disappointment that can tear a family apart, and fight for the future you have always dreamed of?
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Welcome to my blog, Faith. Can you tell us what inspired you to write this book?
This year marks the tenth year since my debut novel – My Husband’s Wives – was published and I have to say, as I sat down to write my latest book, THE SISTERS OF HOPE SQUARE the thought that it would land in readers hands a decade later made me pause before I began.
So, when it came to creating something very special for my readers, I wanted to tackle something worthwhile. Here in Ireland so much has changed over the last decade. Like everywhere else in Europe, we are struggling with a housing crisis, as more people arrive on our shores and need a roof over their heads, while at the same time, the cost of building has become prohibitively high.
I could have written about that – in fact, I started out writing about just that, but at the end of the first draft, it was obvious something was not working…
So, the whole book got turned over on its head. This is not as unusual as you might think, a first draft is only that, the sketching out of an idea. What would life be if a lady novelist couldn’t change her mind now and again?
Most of us are looking to escape the worries of the world. I adore that you can open the covers of a book, sink into an armchair and at the same, step into a different world.
The world I’ve created on Pin Hill Island, is one that will take you away from your worries while you watch the blue skies overhead, listen to the waves in the distance and hopefully invest in the drama between Blythe and Rae – two sisters, divided by an inheritance that went the wrong way round. One sister got the hotel and the husband that the other set her heart on, except, all that glitters is not always gold and in this case – one woman’s pavlova is another woman’s poison!
THE SISTERS AT HOPE SQUARE is not a story about a shortage of housing, rather it is about the idea that property can be a noose around your neck, or it can be the green-eyed monster that holds you in its grip. Either scenario will stifle your joy in life, until you realize that property is just bricks and mortar. It is the bond with people who mean most to you, above all else, that is the key to being happy.
This is a story of two estranged sisters, and how they struggle to survive without each other. We meet them at a time when the façades they’ve hidden behind for far too long are splintering. One of them must be brave enough to make the first move, the question is, how far have you to be pushed before you ask for help? And is it ever too late to make up for a lifetime of jealousy and regret?
Come to Pin Hill Island this June… it promises to be an interesting summer!
About Faith
Short Bio
Faith Hogan is an award-winning, million copy, bestselling author. She is a USA Today Bestseller, Irish Times Top Ten and an Amazon UK Number 1 Best Selling writer of contemporary, fiction novels that are unashamedly feel good and uplifting.
She lives in the west of Ireland with her family and their Labrador named Penny. She’s a writer, reader, enthusiastic dog walker and reluctant jogger – except of course when it is raining!
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More of Faith’s Books
Karen King 