Book review: The penny tree

My rating: 3 stars

The Penny tree, written by Holly Kennedy, is a story of an "almost" divorced mother of two who gets her world turned upside down when an ad runs on front page of a local newspaper asking "have you seen this woman?"

I had a hard time getting into this book because the heroine seemed like such a victim, her husband had left her, her son had gotten sick, she had been fired etc. Which are all understandable reasons to be upset, but it seemed like all this woman did was mope around and complain. In fact complaining to her patients is what got her fired from her physical therapy job in the first place! But the author does redeem herself by showing how a person can be in control of the circumstances around her and make good come out of something bad.

For example, when she feels like her two sons (Luke - 13 and Eric -11) are alienating themselves from her she starts to really focus on the things that she thinks will make them better rather then just wallowing in self pity. In the end the book becomes inspirational, and yes she chooses the right man to spend the rest of her life with. So even though it was not my favorite novel, I enjoyed the main moral of the story.