[responsivevoice_button buttontext=”Listen”]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Warm, compassionate and cozy, this book is the closest you will ever come to a giant literary hug. The first in the Hedgehog Hollow series, this reader, after reviewing and falling in love with Book 4, (#aWeddingatHedgeHogHollow) is going back (with great joy) to read and review the entire series.

Sam Wishaw, our main protagonist and the first-person POV narrator for this story, is a wonderfully relatable character. A kind and caring woman, by profession a nurse, Sam is given to putting herself and her needs last on every list. So much so that, it may come as no surprise to hear, Sam has often found herself spectacularly taken advantage of, distressingly often by those considered her closest family, friends and lovers.

Burdened with a challenging and fractured relationship with a mother whose behavior alternates between brutal verbal aggression and icy-cold withdrawal, Sam’s father, a devoted and loving country vet, (also a hapless victim to his wife’s scorching vagaries) has become her always-available and emotionally-safe harbor, providing unwavering support for Sam throughout the lows and (inevitably for Sam), the lowers.

Without giving the plot away (no spoilers here), this first edition in Sam’s story has all the elements of the very best of fiction, – a magical start to a new and unfolding series.

• Our warm-hearted, sensible clear-eyed heroine, raw and vulnerable, doing her best to stand tall as she is repeatedly and painfully misunderstood.
• A beautifully crafted and authentic cast of characters who are real people, with all their heartbreaking foibles and internal struggles with their own hurt, loss, and grief.
• And finally, Love and more Love (with a big capital L), in all its many forms : thwarted love, cruel love, new love, forever love, and underpinning it all, – the love and solace of good friends (new and old), prized family members, and a barnful of cute and cuddly hedgehogs.

I loved this book, – a perfect start to a new series that (armed with my little bit of prescient reading) will undoubtedly grow and evolve and blossom to see Sam and all her cohorts, be-furried or not, quickly become some of my very favorite friends between the pages.

A great big thank you to the author for an ARC of this wonderful book. All thoughts presented are my own.