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The things we do for love

A Novel

Kristin Hannah

595 pages

A tender, tear-jerking exploration of found family and the unexpected ways a broken heart can heal.

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What it feels like

Reading this novel feels like sitting at a bustling, noisy family dinner table while nursing a quiet, private heartache. It is a deeply earnest and emotionally heavy experience, anchored by a steady pace that allows the characters' grief and tentative hopes to fully breathe. The atmosphere is steeped in the cozy, salt-tinged nostalgia of a Pacific Northwest hometown, contrasting sharply with the raw, painful realities of infertility, divorce, and parental neglect. The prose is accessible and unabashedly sentimental, designed to pull directly at the heartstrings and elicit genuine tears. It is a book for readers who crave immersive, character-driven women's fiction that explores the fierce, unconventional shapes that motherhood and family can take, ultimately offering a cathartic and hopeful emotional release.

Mood
  • tender
  • melancholy
  • hopeful
  • cozy
Tone
  • earnest
  • compassionate
  • poignant
  • sentimental
Pace
steady
Themes
found family · pain of infertility · unconventional motherhood · healing from heartbreak · starting over
The writing
Accessible, emotionally resonant, and deeply empathetic, focusing heavily on internal emotional landscapes.
The arc
Moves from profound grief and shattered expectations to a tentative, hard-won healing through unexpected connection.
Who it's for
Readers who love tear-jerking, character-driven women's fiction centered on family dynamics and the fierce bonds of female relationships.
Content notes
  • infertility
  • divorce
  • child neglect
  • alcoholism
  • grief

About the book

author Kristin Hannah "touches the deepest, most tender corner of our hearts" (Tami Hoag). Her last novel, Between Sisters, was chosen by CBS's The Early Show as one of the best books of the summer. Now she returns with The Things We Do for Love--a poignant, evocative story that celebrates the magic of motherhood, the joys of coming home, and the price we so willingly pay for love.The youngest of three daughters, Angela DeSaria Malone was always "the princess" of the family, a girl who thought she knew how her life would unfold. High School. College. Marriage. Motherhood. That was how it had gone for her sisters, her cousins, her friends. But it didn't work out that way for Angie. She and her husband tried desperately to have a child; year after year, their perfectly decorated nursery remained empty. Finally, their marriage collapsed under the weight of lost dreams.After the divorce, Angie moved back to her hometown and rejoined her loud, loving, slightly crazy family. In West End, a place where life rises and falls in time with the tides, she will find the man who once again will open her heart to love... and meet the girl who will change Angie's life.Lauren Ribido lives in a rundown apartment in a bad part of town with a mother who cares more about her next drink than about her daughter. At seventeen, Lauren knows that her aspirations in life may never come to pass.From the moment they meet, Angie sees something special in Lauren. They form a quick connection, this woman who is desperate for a daughter and the girl who has never known a mother's love. When Lauren is abandoned by her mother, Angie doesn't hesitate to offer the girl a place to stay.But nothing could have prepared Angie for the far-reaching repercussions of this act of kindness. In a dramatic turn of events, she and Lauren will be tested in a way that mothers and daughters seldom are. Together they will embark on an intensely moving, deeply emotional journey to the very heart of what it means to be a family.From the Hardcover edition.

Description from Open Library.

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