Magnolia Nights
Magnolia Nights by Ashley Farley
Kindle Edition
Expected publication: September 12th 2017
From the author of the bestselling Sweeney Sister Series and Sweet Tea Tuesdays comes a new novel of passion, intrigue, and redemption.
Ellie Pringle has spent endless hours and countless dollars working with a therapist to remember the lost years of her childhood. She’s baffled and more than a little intrigued when the grandmother she hasn’t seen in thirty-four years dies and leaves her a fortune. The time has come to face her past in person. Still reeling from a recent breakup of a long-term relationship, and with nothing to keep her in San Francisco, Ellie packs her meager belongings and boards a plane for the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Standing in the entryway of her grandmother’s antebellum home on South Battery Street in Charleston, Ellie faces the first of many ghosts who will soon haunt her. On her first night in the creepy, creaking mansion, as she’s perusing the titles in a dusty bookcase, she comes across her deceased mother’s leather-bound journal. Her mother’s words create more unanswered questions and send her on a quest to find more journals. As Hurricane Irma bears down on the South Carolina coast, Ellie encounters Julian Hagood, a handsome architect who has the talent to restore her dilapidated mansion and the charm to mend her broken heart. But as Ellie reads her mother’s diaries, they dislodge a stone in the wall that safeguards her memories, causing her world to come crumbling down. Revelations about her childhood lead Ellie on a harrowing journey of discovery that will hold readers spellbound until the dramatic conclusion.
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First line—"Ellie approached the antebellum mansion with caution. Thirty-four years has passed since she'd last been here. Time had not been kind to the house, as evidenced by the paint peeling in sheets off the wood siding and rotten newel posts on the first- and second-floor porches."
Ashley Farley is one of my must-read authors and I have been reading her books since her very first one came out. I know when I start one of her books, that I am going to be lost in the world she has created. Magnolia Nights is her newest book and I just devoured it, but then I didn't want it to end.
When Ellie learns that her estranged grandmother has left her her estate in her will, Ellie goes back to the town and that house, a place that she has little memories of and a place full of secrets. What could've happened in that house all those years ago to make her forget that time in her life? The truth starts to come out after she finds her mother's old journals and and she remembers the horrible situation that she and her mother found themselves in.
This story is an intense tale of discovery, love, evil, and being able to get over the past to find happiness. And it's a story of secrets, lots of secrets. Ellie is an amazingly strong woman who had my admiration and support from the very first page. I loved how she just took on that house, and those memories and secrets, and turned her bad situation into a good one.
I received a copy of Magnolia Nights from the author in exchange for my honest opinion.
************************
About the author
After her brother died in 1999 of an accidental overdose, she turned to writing as a way of releasing her pent-up emotions. She wrote Saving Ben in honor of Neal, the boy she worshipped, the man she could not save.
Ashley is a wife and mother of two young adult children. While she’s lived in Richmond, Virginia for the past 21 years, part of her heart remains in the salty marshes of the South Carolina Lowcountry where she grew up. Through the eyes of her characters, she’s able to experience the moss-draped trees, delectable cuisine, and kind-hearted folks with lazy drawls that make the area so unique.
*********************