Watch Us Shine

A Novel

By: Marisa de los Santos

Narrated by: Erin Bennett, Nan McNamara

Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Marisa de los Santos returns to the world of her beloved, bestselling novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in an enthralling tale of sisterhood, sacrifice, and the enduring power of love.

“Bring me the Northern Lights.”

Cornelia Brown is reeling from a terrifying act of violence when she gets word that her mother has been badly injured in an accident. Cornelia returns to Virginia, to the house she grew up in, and in the weeks that follow, she watches her mother Ellie struggle to recover, fluctuating between her usual crisp, can-do clarity and periods of delirium during which she seems haunted by a devastating loss from her past. In grief-stricken tones, Ellie begs Cornelia to bring her the Northern Lights, and despite her confusion at this mysterious plea, Cornelia vows to do so: “She was my mother and she wanted the Northern Lights; I was her daughter and would have given her anything, anything.”

With the help of her prickly sister, Ollie, Cornelia embarks on a mission to piece together the lost years of their mother’s life: people, places, and events spanning Ellie’s late teens through her mid-twenties. Cornelia and Ollie’s quest takes them to unexpected places and into the worlds of strangers whose lives Ellie touched and irrevocably changed. As the sisters uncover truths about their mother’s life—some beautiful, some ugly, some tragic—Cornelia herself begins to heal, to forgive herself, and to find her way back home.

Alternating between two timelines—Cornelia’s story in the present, and that of the young Eleanor Campbell in the 1960s—Watch Us Shine explores the complicated bonds between sisters, the impossible demands of motherhood, and the power of human love to save us again and again.

©2023 Marisa de los Santos (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Mother daughter sister relationship

I like it when an author can throw in a twist that I don't guess. It was an unexpected not totally happy ending that was satisfying and made sense. I liked the mother/daughter/sister dynamics. Cornelia's personal crisis was a bit clunky but I forgave that because of the unexpected plot with Ellie's sister...

Interesting

I’m a big de los Santos fan. Especially the Cordelia books. Love Walked in got me through a bout of depression and I’ve reread it several times. But this one disappointed me. The good news: I think she created this story to explain why Ollie was such a cold fish coming from such a warm family. De los Santos never disappoints in her descriptions of Christmas. The hook was intriguing but never got fully answered. SPOILER ALERT
One part that disturbed me was the hit and run. I get that the Browns are a loving and forgiving family but the police would have been called. And the woman almost died! You hit a woman like that, you put her in the hospital for weeks, you don’t get to just walk away.
The second thing that bugged me was the Martha story. SPOILER ALERT. You can’t just leave a child with someone and come back into that child’s life five years later and just walk off with that child. That’s incredibly harmful to the child and out of character for Ellie and B.
I hated what Joe did to Martha but you can’t just abandon your child for five years(!) and then take over as Mommy. I also found the Cordelia story in the grocery store out of the rhythm of the book. Great story; lesson learned. But… Cordelia didn’t follow her gut when she sensed something disturbing about the man. She put her self righteous feeling above her gut feeling and paid the consequences.
And she never acknowledges it.
Anyway, I’m glad I heard it but doubt I’ll listen again.

A new book in the series!

Loved the development of a new character of a family of characters I already knew!

Farfetched

I have read all of her books and they are all very entertaining but this one was meh…….