Review for Millicent Glenn's Last Wish by Tori Whitaker

 

Millicent Glenn's Last Wish by  Tori Whitaker 

Kindle Edition, 340 pages

Published October 1st 2020 by Lake Union Publishing

Genre:  Historical Fiction, Womens Fiction, Chic Lit, Contemporary

Three generations of women—and the love, loss, sacrifice, and secrets that can bind them forever or tear them apart.

Millicent Glenn is self-sufficient and contentedly alone in the Cincinnati suburbs. As she nears her ninety-first birthday, her daughter Jane, with whom she’s weathered a shaky relationship, suddenly moves back home. Then Millie’s granddaughter shares the thrilling surprise that she’s pregnant. But for Millie, the news stirs heartbreaking memories of a past she’s kept hidden for too long. Maybe it’s time she shared something, too. Millie’s last wish? For Jane to forgive her.

Sixty years ago Millie was living a dream. She had a husband she adored, a job of her own, a precious baby girl, and another child on the way. They were the perfect family. All it took was one irreversible moment to shatter everything, reshaping Millie’s life and the lives of generations to come.

As Millie’s old wounds are exposed, so are the secrets she’s kept for so long. Finally revealing them to her daughter might be the greatest risk a mother could take in the name of love.

 

My Thoughts…

Millicent is heading towards her 91^st birthday and knows that she has to make things right with her daughter.  When Jane, her daughter, surprises her by moving back home she knows that this is the time she has been waiting for.

Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish is a story of 3 generations all trying to find their way in life.   Millie is the matriarch and is ready to share the secret she has kept for so long.   Jane wants to be included in the everyday lives of both her mother and her daughter.  Kelsey, the granddaughter, has a special relationship with her grandmother and is excited to start a new chapter in her life.   

I loved all three women.   They are family but they are each other own person.   Each woman is strong, loving, and wonderful but have had their own struggles in life.   There are secrets between them that they need to share, conversations that they need to have, and wounds that they need to heal.   Together the three of them can come together and pull their family back together.  Kelsey and Millie’s relationship is one that I envy.   The relationship between a granddaughter and a grandmother is so special.   Jane and Millie’s relationship is one that I understand.   A mother/daughter relationship is not always easy and sometimes when a mother thinks she is protecting her daughter she is wrong.    The way that they came together, did not give up, and worked through all their feelings showed that the love of a family can heal all.      

Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish is an amazing uplifting and real story.   The characters are real, the story has so much truth in it, and the relationships are realistic.   I recommend picking up your own copy.

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Meet Tori Whitaker

My dream of writing a book first took root in my twenties, and some forty years later, I’ve seen that dream come true. Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish—part historical fiction and part contemporary family drama—is my debut novel. I love stories that shift between the past and present. Maybe that’s because my family had five living generations upon my birth, and when my own grandchildren came along, my family had five living generations again. This experience has also given me a sense of what we observe in those who’ve come before us … and what we pass down from one generation to the next.

I was born in the suburbs of Cincinnati, near where my novel takes place. I mostly grew up in Indiana, spent a decade in metro-Detroit with my husband’s career, and now we reside outside of Atlanta. We’ve been married for more than forty years, and we feel blessed to be near our two sons and their families.

My writing journey officially began when we became empty-nesters. I still write on the weekends and evenings while not at my job, and I’m known to use vacation time to draft pages for fourteen hours a day, or to take trips just for research. I’m a member of the Historical Novel Society, and my feature article, “Multi-Period Novels: The Keys to Weaving Together Two Stories from Different Time Periods,” appeared in the Historical Novels Review. I graduated from Indiana University, where I studied marketing and English. I head up the marketing department of a national law firm (yes, lawyers sometimes get a bad rap, but I’ve worked with this group for twenty-some years, and they’re the best!). I’m also an alum of the Yale Writers’ Workshop.

No matter my hectic schedule, I make room for reading or listening to books, doing a little cooking, and playing in the sunshine. And I enjoy the community of readers! You can connect with me directly  here or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.