The Sweetness of Forgetting

Author: Kristin Harmel
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Gallery Books, 2022
Pages: 400
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: At thirty-six, Hope McKenna-Smith is no stranger to bad news. She lost her mother to cancer, her husband left her, and her bank account is nearly depleted. Her own dreams of becoming a lawyer long gone, she's running a failing family bakery on Cape Cod and raising a troubled preteen.

Now, Hope's beloved French-born grandmother Mamie is drifting away in a haze of Alzheimer's. But in a rare moment of clarity, Mamie realizes that unless she tells Hope about the past, the secrets she has held on to for so many years will soon be lost forever. Tantalizingly, she reveals mysterious snippets of a tragic history in WWII Paris. Armed with a scrawled list of name, Hope heads to France to uncover a seventy-year-old mystery.

Uncovering horrific tales of the Holocaust, she realizes the astonishing will of her grandmother to endure in a world gone mad. And to reunite two lovers torn apart by terror, all she'll need is a dash of courage, and the believe that God exists everywhere, even in cake.

Review: This book was first published in 2012, but I read a copy that was published in 2022 and included recipes not found in the original. This layered novel was heartbreaking and sad, but full of hope too (and not just because that was the main character's name). 

Some books grab you from the first page, and I was all-in early in this novel. It was obvious to me that the author was writing from a place of experience, and the author's note at the end is not to be missed.

Other Kristin Harmel Novels:
The Paris Daughter
The Winemaker's Wife