Review: Now That You Mention it by Kristan Higgins

Synopsis from Good Reads:

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With a tough islander mother who’s always been distant and a wild-child sister in jail, unable to raise her daughter–a withdrawn teen as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was–Nora has her work cut out for her if she’s going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family.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.

I received a copy of this title via Edelweiss. It does not impact my review. 

Now That You Mention It will be available December 26, 2017.

I have been a fan of Kristan Higgins for years now and have read all of her books – most of them multiple times. Whenever I need a pick-me-up her books do the trick. I don’t read a lot of straight up Romance books so she has become my go-to when that’s what I’m in the mood for. Her last few books, though, have moved out of the Romance category and more into Women’s Fiction. While the books have obviously still been up to the standard I expect out of Higgins, they weren’t quite the light and fluffy feel good stories I was used to getting and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Even though Now That You Mention It feels a lot more serious than most her other books, it still ended up being exactly the book I needed right now. Higgins still made me happy and made me feel and I quite loved this book.

The character development was really well done. The story was told in Nora’s 1st person POV and I really felt a connection to her. I identified a lot with her teenage self, as well. I felt like she grew a lot throughout the novel and I was rooting for her every step of the way. I loved her growing relationships with her mother, her niece, the daughter of some of her old classmates, an old friend, and her new love interest, Sullivan. I loved Sullivan so much!  He was so sweet and a great father. I also liked how his severe hearing loss was dealt with. My mother works with the deaf and hard of hearing and I always find it interesting when a deaf/HOA person is represented in fiction. The romance did play a much smaller role in the story than I was expecting, but it just made me love it even more.

Overall, I really loved Now That You Mention It. Kristian Higgins is really one of my favorite authors and while there was a lot of her trademark style in this book, I also felt like she went outside of her comfort zone and stretched a little more as an author. While I will always hope she writes some more of the light and fluffy romances I have come to love from her, I will no longer be disappointed to see she has something different coming out. I found this compulsively readable and did not want to put it down. The only complaint I really have is that I felt the end was a little too rushed. Still, I would definitely recommend this one.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 4 Stars