Book Summary and Reviews of Faithful by Alice Hoffman

Faithful by Alice Hoffman

Faithful

A Novel

by Alice Hoffman

  • Readers' Rating (7):
  • Published:
  • Nov 2016, 272 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers comes a soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.

Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who's been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.

Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who's ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.

Alice Hoffman's "trademark alchemy" (USA Today) and her ability to write about the "delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary" (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Popular and prolific Hoffman brings her lavish inventiveness and deep empathy to the story of a young woman afflicted with survivor's guilt who finds kindred spirits in New York City, along with a watchful angel." —Booklist

"Hoffman being heartbreaking and magical." —Library Journal

"A novel full of people—flawed, scarred, scared—discovering how to punish themselves less and connect with others more." —Kirkus Reviews

"Faithful is a poignant novel about grief, guilt, and recovery. Alice Hoffman is a wonderful storyteller." —Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers

"Alice Hoffman is a spectacular writer—generous and compassionate, elegant and fierce—and Faithful is both a sweeping page-turner and a gorgeous, heartbreaking exploration of family, faith, and love. This novel is as captivating as it is impossible to put down. I loved it." —Molly Antopol, critically acclaimed author of The UnAmericans

This information about Faithful was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Alice Hoffman

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including Magic Lessons, The World That We Knew, Practical Magic, The Rules of Magic, the Oprah's Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Red Garden, The Dovekeepers, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, The Marriage of Opposites, and Faithful. She lives near Boston.

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