🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕

Absolute perfection, this is a book that simply could not be better.

Best described as the comfortable puzzling of Agatha Christie meets the sweet, gentle protagonists of Alexander McCall Smith – but thicker, more immersive, with characters and imagery so evocative, layered, and expertly drafted you absolutely know these people and these places, and you feel it all, whatever they feel, every step along the way with them.

And it breaks your heart, and makes you smile, and most of all, makes you thankful to be in this life, as the ticking clock of your life (and their life) slowly thrums, giving each of you another day to experience it all.

Florrie Butterfield, eighty-seven years old, is our narrator – a beautiful, complex, compassionate woman, who counts herself lucky to find herself living in Babbington Hall Residential Home and Assisted Living in Oxfordshire, England. In a wheelchair, and with only one leg remaining, when not one but two terrible happenings upset the status quo, Florrie finds herself, along with the charming (and very tall) ex Latin-teacher Stanhope Jones, investigating the mysterious and disturbing events.

Along the way, Florrie reminisces. Oh, how she reminisces. Her life, her loves (all six of them), and her globe-trotting adventures, make up the bulk of the story (and what a big, chunky, lovely story this is). For Florrie has lived, — has had both wondrous, and horrifying experiences, every one of which the reader will gradually unravel and experience along with her.

Prepare to be touched, to be elevated, to be loved as you absorb these wonderful characters (and the tenderness they send), solve this mystery, and most of all, visit with Florrie.

If you are at all like this reader, you will find yourself so enraptured (indeed, bawling at the ending) that you will not want to leave Florrie’s world.