Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Saving Graces

The Saving Graces
The Saving Graces
Author: Patricia Gaffney
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
Readnmachine avatar reviewed on + 1441 more book reviews


There are a lot of "women's novels" out there about groups of women who form lifelong friendships and end up helping each other through major changes. But most of them don't tell the story as well as Gaffney does here.

At first, it looks like a set-up. Emma is hopelessly in love with a married man. Lee is so intent on having a baby that the effort is endangering her marrieage. Rudy is slowly being subsumed by a passive-aggressive husband who's not above gaslighting her to get his way. And Isabel has survived divorce only to face a battle with breast cancer.

Pretty much Hallmark Movie of the Week up to this point.

But these women are so well drawn, and their responses are so consistent to their characters, that the reader really will begin to care about what happens to them.