A Little Ray of Sunshine

A LITTLE RAY OF SUNSHINE by Kristan Higgins is an emotionally intense women’s fiction family drama with romantic elements featuring a bookstore owner on Cade Cod and the son she gave up for adoption eighteen years previously. While this standalone is a great read, it has a cover which may lead you to believe this is a light summer read, it definitely is not.

Every year the Patel family takes an extended summer vacation to a different location. This year seventeen-year-old Matthew has talked the family into going to Cape Cod. He and his father arrive first, while his mother and younger sister will arrive when her school year is over. Matthew and his father go into the local independent bookstore and when the owner, Harlow sees them, she faints.

Harlow secretly placed her son up for adoption the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of college. She picked the family her son would go to, but he was not supposed to be able to contact her if he chose until his eighteenth birthday. He found her online and did not tell his adoptive family that this was his reason for the Cape Cod vacation. Now he is here for the summer and while she is excited, she is also about to have her quiet life blown up.

There is so much happening in this story. Harlow is dealing with seeing a beautiful grown son who wants to get to know her and her family. She also must tell her family about having a child at eighteen for the first time. Monica Patel is dealing with a son who has lied to the family and the fear of him choosing his birth mother over her love. The two mothers’ emotions and point of view pull you into this drama because you can empathize with both. Matthew is dealing with questions children of adoption are known to have and his emotional shifts are as heart wrenching as the two mother’s stories. There are several characters with side stories woven throughout that lighten the emotional angst at times, or bring a bit of romance into the plot, but overall this is a story where you will want to have the tissues close by your side.

I highly recommend this emotionally charged women’s fiction!

Okay. I tried. I really, truly did. I even did the slow-down move Meg Ryan’s character does in ‘You’ve Got Mail’. You know the one, she comes down the stairs, about to meet the man she’s been emailing back and forth with. She does a little ‘jog’, then put her hands down by her side, as if saying slow down, don’t hurry. That was me as I voraciously read Kristan Higgins’Little Ray of Sunshine’. I came out of my book fog, and saw that I was nearly at the end of this beautiful, and beautifully told, story. Author Kristan Higgins has done it again. Her books will make you laugh, cry, feel the emotions we all share. Her characters are lifelike. Wonderful, funny, heart wrenchingly authentic and yes, even flawed, just as all human beings are. The dynamics of family relationships is brought to life in every one of the characters in ’A Little Ray of Sunshine’. Do yourself a solid. Run, don’t walk, to purchase/borrow from a friend or a library, this book. It’s wonderful. Thank you Kristan Higgins. You’ve done it again! I’ll remember these characters and their stories for a very, very long time. You grabbed my heart, touched my soul, and made me ever grateful that I discovered your books, once upon a time, in our town library. I am a lifelong fan. I only have one request. Promise that you will never stop writing.

Thank you, Kristan, for a wonderful book about the emotional entanglements of motherhood and family. Though my own experiences of those same factors were very different from Harlow's, the emotions and insights into these factors resonate in me. You have given me many opportunities to reflect on my own life while completely making me care about the many people I met in the story. It is a gift to the reader when the author pulls you in, holds your attention throughout, and the end comes, leaves you with a strong sense of time well spent with good friends.

Beautifully written, this deep dive into motherhood, longing, and love was the perfect summer read. Per her usual, Higgins had me laughing in chapter one and crying by chapter two. Filled with authenticity and deeply emotional, she captures the pain of loss and the joy of finding love in unexpected ways. Higgins balances humor with the seriousness of difficult life issues and has you rooting for her characters on every page. Well done! Highly recommend.

As a huge Kristan Higgins fan, I knew I had to read A Little Ray of Sunshine.

This novel deals with adoption and all the feelings surrounding it from the mom who gives her child to strangers, to the parents who get the new baby, to the child wanting to know more about his birth parents.

Harlow lives in Cape Cod with her family. She is a part owner of a bookstore in conjunction with her grandfather and her distant cousin, Cynthia.

Harlow receives the shock of her life when the child she gave away when she was seventeen walks into her bookstore. Of course, she was not ready, and proceeded to faint. When she comes back, she realizes her son Matthew is truly there with his adoptive father. Harlow couldn't be happier that Matthew came looking for her but how is she going to explain it to her family who have no clue she did this in college? The only person who knows of her devastation and sorrow was her roommate at that time.

Monica Patel works hard to make sure her family has what they need. She is always providing for them and her children's future. Since the moment she got Matthew in her arms, Monica has dedicated herself to be the best mom she could be.

As part of the summer, the Patels have always taken a vacation together, and this year the place her son picked was Cape Cod. When she finds out that he did it because of Harlow, she can't believe how sneaky he has become. She is so mad that he blindsided them and Harlow.

Cynthia Millstone is part owner of the bookstore too. Her personality is off-putting. She believes she is above others and more refined than the Smiths but her marriage fails and without any money, the only choice she had was to move to Cap Cod. The only person from that family she likes is Grandpop.

Pretty interesting and well-developed characters in this book. I do have favorites. I love Grandpop, Oliver Twist (the dog), and Grady Byrne.

I was able to see both sides of the coin in regard to Harlow and Monica. Felt super bad for Monica and all the sacrifices she had to make to give her family what they needed.

I'm not going to lie, I do miss some of Kristan's earlier books when the romance was forefront but I will read anything she writes.

Cliffhanger: No

4/5 Fangs

Eighteen years ago Harlow at age 17 gave up her infant son to Monica and Sanjay. This summer He walks into her Cape Cod bookstore and she instantly recognizes him and faints. Matthew's surprise visit to his mother throws his adopted family into an awkward summer of Matthew getting to know his birth mother's family. Her family never even knew that she had been pregnant nor that she had given up her child. For eighteen years Harlow has loved and missed the son she gave up and this chance gives her the chance to fulfill her dream of mothering her own child. There are many complications and family issues which seem ever so possible in our world today. This was a very interesting read and I recommend it.

When Harlow was 17 and a freshman in college, she became pregnant. After making the difficult decision to put her son up for adoption, she returns home to Cape Cod and lives a quiet life as a bookstore owner. The status quo is disrupted 18 years later when her son, Matthew, surprises Harlow in her store.

Matthew wants to understand why Harlow gave him away. Never having told her family about her child, Harlow needs to deal with her family's feelings of betrayal, as well as Matthew's anger. She also struggles with guilt about relinquishing her child and feeling like she doesn't deserve any future children. The story is told primarily from Harlow's perspective with chapters interspersed from the adoptive mother's, Monica's, perspective. Monica is struggling with anger and resentment because her son wants to know his bio family.

The book has a very slow pace. (There are chapters from an unlikeable 3rd character's perspective that are superfluous in my opinion.) It's ultimately satisfying as Harlow and Monica make their peace with each other and with Matthew and, ultimately, affirm what being a mother means.

3.5 stars