Book Reiew: The Vicar's Wife

Many phrases come to mind when I think of The Vicar's Wife:
charming
well-written
beautiful look at history
expansive vocabulary
well-developed characters
views from two different eras in the same small village
quite empathetic
very relatable
easy to read

Living with the characters will invite you (silently) to ask deep questions that we all have to struggle with in life and marriage.  Who am I?  How will I invest my time?  Who will I allow to impact my plans and my purpose?  What am I willing to give up for my marriage?  How can I honor my spouse in decision-making?  How will I find joy in tough situations? How do I find supportive community when I'm in new places?  What do I do when I love my children, but don't like the phase they're in?  How can I bring light into dark and dreary places?  How will I recover when I lose something important to me?


From the publisher:
"A New Yorker all her life, Jane Hatton loved her job as the head of a charity championing women’s rights, but her fourteen year- old daughter, Natalie, had fallen in with the wrong crowd at her Manhattan school. So Jane and her British husband, Andrew, have decided to move their family to the English countryside. The Hattons have bought the large old vicarage in a small village on the Cumbrian coast, near Andrew’s new job. The silence and solitude of a remote village is quite a change. Natalie hates her new school, and eleven-year-old Ben struggles academically. Only seven-year-old Merrie enjoys country life. Has Jane made a horrible mistake? What of her career? Her own identity? Putting on a brave face for the family, Jane tackles renovating the rambling, drafty old house. When she finds a scrap of a very old shopping list, she grows curious about Alice, the vicar’s wife who lived there years before. As the twin narratives unfold—of Jane in the present and Alice in the 1930s—we discover that both are on a journey to discover their true selves, and to address their deepest fears."

I would recommend this book to any female reader age 16+.  The content is appropriate for a younger audience, but the storyline is more suited to adult readers.

I received this book as a gift from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.