So I was unsympathetic to Elizabeth during this entire book.

From there we have Elizabeth traveling back to where her father lived and finding out about what led her mother to him all of those years ago. While staying at her mother’s home, Elizabeth is informed there’s a codicil to her mother’s will and also finds letters from her father that he wrote to her mother almost 40 years ago.

She’s a single mother raising her 17 year old son and dealing with the fall out of her marriage still. Elizabeth hates being back in her hometown and feels like a failure. “A Keeper” follows Elizabeth Keane as she returns back home to settle her deceased mother’s (Patricia) estate. Maybe if Norton actually spent time building up any of these characters I would have cared more. The plot with Elizabeth’s son came out of nowhere and just made zero sense. The author throwing Patrica’s POV in did nothing to help things. Instead we don’t really find out about it, we hear bits and pieces via other inconsequential secondary characters. I thought I was sitting down to read a solid mystery about a woman returning (Elizabeth) to her hometown in Ireland and finding out about her mother’s (Patricia) past. I don’t like to do that with NetGalley reads though, so I may have to rethink on that in the future. I maybe at one point while reading this ARC said are you serious and then started muttering to myself about just DNFing it. I tend to wait at least a day after finishing a book to post a review, but I am highly annoyed right now and just want to put this book behind me. This book will be released on August 13, 2019. Please note that I received this book via NetGalley.

Graham norton book a keeper review