Karen Burnett is a very busy woman, she's currently Relief Society president and in charge of many things, including funerals. She's just taking the funeral potatoes for today's funeral from the oven when her husband calls her on her cell phone. She doesn't have time or a hand to answer right then, so she figures she'll just have to call him back. But by the time she gets the funeral taken care of she realizes that something must be terribly wrong because he's called her so many times. What she hears when she calls him back is devastating to her. Granny Adelaide, the woman who raised her husband Tom, is dying, she's needed at the hospital immediately. Luckily she's able to get there with enough time to say goodbye, but Granny passes away later that day. Before she passes away though, she asks Karen for one last favor. There was hard feelings in the family and a split many years earlier. Granny would like the whole family to come together and have a meal together will all of the favorites that she used to make for them. The recipes are not the problem, Tom wants nothing to do with his two youngest siblings or half siblings that came from his Dad's second wife. Karen must put aside his feelings to be able to do this for Granny and hopefully he, as well as the rest of his siblings, will be able to heal, learn to love each other and move on.
This is a really cute book! I loved the way it's set up with a recipe and then a chapter that includes the family eating, making, or finding the recipe to use for the funeral lunch. I liked the way the whole point of the book was forgiving and moving on, I know that in many families, mine included, there are people that need to forgive, learn to love, and move on happily. I liked the characters, all of them were likable and seemed as though they could be real people in either your family or your ward. I hope that Susan Aylworth is planning to write more books like this!
I was sent an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Labels: LDS fiction, Susan Aylworth
