Book Review: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Book: Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
Genre: Literary fiction
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

So much buzz last year around this book! And I'm happy to report that for me it lived up to the hype! Such a crazy gripping story!

It's fictional story but based on something that really happened in history, in Tennessee between 1920 and 1950 or so. This lady decided to have an "orphanage" and sell kids to rich people. I guess some of the kids were truly orphans, but many of them were stolen kids... stolen from poor people who signed them away without realizing what they were signing.

We follow the story of one family who's parents went to the hospital so the mom could have twins. They left the rest of the kids on their shanty houseboat. Before they could get back, the bad guys came and stole those kids and took them to this home. This part of the story is told in the voice of the oldest girl, Rill, who is 12 years old. It's heartbreaking.

We flip back and forth between that and the present day where our other girl has a chance encounter with a grandma at a rest home and that makes her think this person has a connection to her own grandma. She starts investigating and uncovers the truth about her family.

I was gripped and totally immersed in this story. Great writing moved it right along and had me at every page. I loved it. Even though it was a painful story, it was told in a hopeful way and so it wasn't necessarily a downer. I appreciated that too. Perfect. So glad to have finally read this one!

We'll be discussing it at book club this week. I'm hoping everyone else enjoyed it too!