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Melissa Payne, bestselling author of The Secrets of Lost Stones, returns with another haunting and hopeful novel about redemption, the power of memory, and a woman's will to reclaim her life. My name is Claire. I'm thirty-six years old. It's September. I know what I'm doing and why I am here...for now. Ten years ago, Claire Hines lost her unborn child--and her short-term memory--following a heartrending tragedy. With notebooks, calendars, to-do lists, fractured pieces of the past, and her father's support, Claire makes it through each day, hour by hour, with relative confidence. She also has a close-knit community of friends in the remote Alaskan town where she teaches guitar to the local children. It's there, in the reminders. As determined as Claire is to regain all that's disappeared, she'd prefer to live without some memories of her before life--especially those of her mother, Alice, who abandoned her, and Tate, the ex-boyfriend who broke her heart. But when Alice and Tate return from the past, there'll be so much more for Claire to relive. And to discover for the very first time. Through healing, forgiveness, and second chances, Claire may realize that what's most important might not be re-creating the person she was, but embracing the possibilities of being the person she is.
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Prepare To Cry. Holy hell y'all. This book is one of the more tragic and yet also visceral books about memory loss I've encountered to date, bringing you into the mind of the person more than any other I've yet encountered. And it is also the one that made me BAWL unlike any since Barbara O'Neal's 2019 WHEN WE BELIEVED IN MERMAIDS. Which was over 300 books ago for me. If you're looking for a great story and a good cry, you've found one here. And just to be crystal clear, it isn't like the things that make you cry are hidden - in both cases I picked up on them about a quarter ish of the book before Payne actually explicitly revealed them. And yet the execution on the actual reveal was so gut punching both times... wow. Very much recommended.