Now That You Mention It by Kristan Higgins

 Book Description:

 "One step forward. Two steps back. The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back.
Injured in more ways than one, Nora feels her carefully built life cracking at the edges. There's only one place to land: home. But the tiny Maine community she left fifteen years ago doesn't necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments.
With a tough islander mother who's always been distant and a wild-child sister in jail, unable to raise her daughter--a withdrawn teen as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was--Nora has her work cut out for her if she's going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family.
But as some relationships crumble around her, others unexpectedly strengthen. Balancing loss and opportunity, a dark event from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise...and the chance to begin again."

 Wow just...wow! Kudos to Kristan Higgins -this is a book I highly recommend and will be put on my comfort bookshelf to be read and re-read.

I am so sorry that I waited so long to read this book. Sometimes Ms. Higgins books are hit or miss -this book hit it out of the ballpark for me.

This had everything that an avid chick lit reader could want, sans the ultra-descriptive sex scenes.

What our protagonist, Nora went through in her life would have sent most people off the deep end, but Nora is a Downeaster. Stolid and solid to the core. This book gives us a look back at Nora's growing up years (and they were not especially pretty) right through many...well we could call them tragedies but I won't. I'll call them for lack of a better term, learning experiences -because that is what Nora treats them as. 

This book is written with younger characters, and most likely a younger audience in mind. However, the characters are also written with a thought to maturity that keeps a reader like me very intrigued and interested.

This book has tragedy, mystery redemption and love going for it. There seems to be something for everyone in here. Sometimes Nora can seem to be a 'goody-two-shoes' type, but she really isn't she is just hasn't let the New England stolidness over-ride her sense of hope and her efforts to make things better and to help people.

*ARC supplied by the publisher.