I really didn’t know what to expect from The Shell Collector that I hadn’t read any of this author’s books before. Let me tell what the book is about.
Book Description
A touching novel of love and loss, a friendship that crosses generations, and learning how even the smallest gifts can change a life for good, from USA Today bestselling author Nancy Naigle.
Amanda Whittier had no idea when she said goodbye to her husband, Jack, the morning he deployed that it would be the last time she’d ever see him. Two years later, she’s still trying to put her life with their two children back together. She buys a tiny beach cottage in the town near where they’d wed, and what comes next is as unpredictable as what the tide brings in.
An unlikely friendship with an older woman who has lived there her whole life puts a new lens on Amanda’s situation, and Amanda begins finding shells with quotes in them that seem to guide and inspire her to face her fears. She uncovers local lore about these shells from as far back as thirty years ago that gives her purpose as she chases the stories behind them.
One shell leads her to someone she hasn’t spoken to since the day she laid her husband to rest. As their friendship unfolds, Amanda begins to to believe that he just might hold the key to her future happiness.
My Review of The Shell Collector
A beautiful story of love and loss and most of all of friendship. The kind of friendship that overcomes barriers of age and background and lets you see them for who they truly are.
When a widowed mother of two, Amanda, moves to live on the beach where she and her husband had their honeymoon, she meets a much older widow and they start to be there for each other. Their friendship brings so much healing and new hope and touches the lives of other people in their circle and community.
The secret messages in the shells add to the beauty of this story – people seeming to get the right message at the right time.
This book made me smile, brought a tear and most of all was full of hope for second-chance love and life-giving friendship.
Here’s an example of some of the messages the shells carried:
Meet The Author
Nancy Naigle is a USA Today bestselling author whose many contemporary romance novels include the Adams Grove, Boot Creek, and Christmas in Evergreen series. Several of her novels have been adapted to the television screen, airing on the Hallmark Channel and on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, including the popular Christmas Joy and Hope at Christmas. Nancy makes her home in North Carolina.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher Waterbrook and Multnomah for an advanced copy of this novel. The comments and review are my honest opinion.