Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Renee at It’s Book Talk. Throwback Thursday was designed as an opportunity to share old favorites as well as older books in our TBR. As I started reviewing on Goodreads long before I started my blog, it seemed a great way of sharing my earlier reviews (which I hope have improved since the early days).
So this week I’m revisiting The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q by Sharon Maas – first reviewed in March 2015.
Thirty years of family secrets. Three generations of women. One family heirloom that could change everything.
When she ran away from her childhood home in Guyana, Rika swore that she would never return. Cut off from her family, she has fought hard to make a life for herself and daughter, Inky, in London.
Now, over thirty years later, Rika’s cantankerous, wheelchair-bound mother, Dorothea, arrives in London. But as old wounds re-open, Dorothea and Rika are further apart than ever.
Inky soon learns that her grandmother is sitting on a small fortune. As she uncovers the secrets of the past one by one, she unravels the tragedy that tore her mother and grandmother apart. But nothing can prepare her, or Rika, for Dorothea’s final, unexpected revelation.
My Review
This was a great book, telling the stories of Dorothea, her daughter Rika and Rika’s daughter Inky. Beginning in present day London, Rika and Inky’s lives are thrown into turmoil with the arrival of Rika’s wheelchair bound mother from Guyana. Rika has not seen her mother for thirty years since she ran away from home in Guyana, and Inky has never met her grandmother, or known why her mother ran away.
The arrival of Dorothea inevitably stirs up lot of emotions and the friction is heightened with the discovery that the heirloom she has brought with her is literally worth a small fortune.
The story is brilliantly told by means of flashbacks of both Dorothea’s and Rika’s lives so we are finally party to why Rika ran away. I loved the fact that it was set in Guyana and not Britain because it gave the story an additional cultural and historical interest that helped set it apart from the typical troubled mother/daughter tales. The characters are all well drawn and very believable and it is very easy to get drawn in to the plot.
The story is essentially one about love, relationships, dealing with loss and learning to forgive. It is very touching, tragic and full of surprises with an ending that I had not anticipated.
If you want a read that is entertaining, romantic, tragic and thought-provoking then I thoroughly recommend this book.
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