Review: Letters to My Yesterday by Karyn Sepulveda

Three seemingly different women form a beautiful friendship in this lovely tale by debut novelist Karyn Sepulveda. Marie is 92 years old and runs a cafe at the front of the house that her windowed mother Rosie built during the 1920s. Dee is a frequent patron at the cafe, and the principal of a local public school that is undergoing some radical changes with the adding of an interfaith curriculum. Isla is a marketing guru, hired by Dee to help with the marketing and PR side of the changes at the high school. As the three women meet and bond at the cafe, the story weaves between the past and the present to tell the story of the challenges that each of these women faced. Dee came to Australia in the 1970s as a Lebanese Muslim and has faced many challenges since. Isla is a woman who has suffered a great loss, one that she blames herself for. Marie is the older and wiser woman who has seen it all--as we readers discover through the flashbacks of her life.

This is an enjoyable read. Marie, Dee and Isla all make for sympathetic characters and it would be difficult not to get caught up in each of their stories. Dee's experiences in particular gave me an appreciation of just how hard it would be to move halfway across the world to a strange new land where not everyone is welcoming and where even as a adult she is exposed to ignorance on a daily basis.

The novel is absorbing and tells the story of three very different women living in Sydney. It's very much a story of how people connect and the positive aspects of female friendship.

Recommended.  

Thank you to Ventura Press for my review copy.

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2018

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