The Things We Do For Love by Kristin Hannah

Synopsis:

This is a fiction novel about Angela DeSaria Malone, the youngest of three daughters. She and her husband, Conlan, have been trying for years to have a child but have been unsuccessful and end up divorcing because of the stress and pressure of trying to conceive. Angie moves back home to her hometown after the divorce and reunites with her family and helps out at the family restaurant.

She meets Lauren Ribido, a teenage girl who lives in a dilapidated apartment with her mother who is an alcoholic, and Angie hires Lauren as a waitress and bonds with her and becomes a mother figure to her. Lauren becomes pregnant, and after her mother abandons her she moves in with Angela, and Angela takes care of her. Angela and Conlan remarry, and Lauren and her boyfriend David decide to let them adopt their baby. However, after Lauren gives birth, she changes her mind and ends up keeping her son and raising him on her own.

Review:

I loved this book and found it to be very heartwarming and loved the bond between Angela and Lauren.

“It reminded her that however much life changed, a part of it stayed the same, family.”

“Love can get us through the hardest times. It can also be our hardest times.”

“Grief was like that; both she and Mama knew it well. It would sometimes feel fresh, no matter how long she lived. Some losses ran deep, and time moved too slowly in a lifetime to heal them completely.”

“Some things in life, though, couldn’t be gone in search of. They had to be simply waited for, like the weather. You could look on the horizon and see a bank of black storm clouds. That didn’t guarantee rain tomorrow. It might just as easily dawn bright and clear. There was no way to tell. All you had to do was keep moving and live your life.”