What You Said to Me by Olivia Newport - A Book Review

    

So many series these days are trilogies, often one book per sibling in the series' main family. I was quite excited to discover that Olivia Newport has added a fourth book to her Tree of Life series featuring only child Julian Parisi-Duffy, a genealogist. In this installment her father, Nolan Duffy, has arranged for her to have “help” with a genealogy project searching for a large number of people who were stolen from their families and placed in adoptive families decades ago, the help being an angry teenager in an alternative sentencing program. As with the other books in this series, there is also an historical backstory which is equally if not more compelling than the contemporary one.

Newport writes believable characters who care deeply for one another and for strangers soon to be friends. She places them in situations that are relevant to today's readers. The historical situations also have themes relevant to today. In this book that is mental health and its impact on future generations, both good and bad. While What You Said to Me is a good stand-alone read; it does carry on events from prior books, and leaves the reader hoping for more.

I am grateful to have received a complimentary copy of What You Said to Me from Barbour Publishing via NetGalley without obligation. All opinions expressed here are my own.