Fly Away Home

Fly Away Home

Jennifer Weiner

5 out of 5

I'm not a big fan of V.E.R.B. books. Victim, Entitled, Rescue, Blame types of books, or people for that matter. So I surprised myself when I picked up Fly Away Home and read it in two days. This isn't your typical woman trying to find herself type of book, it's more of a woman trying to get back to who she was all along. I know that sounds like a slight twist of words, but all Sylvie Serfer-Woodruff wanted was to go back to the simple girl she was in college before Richard Woodruff swooped into her life and turned her into the perfect political wife.

A fulfilling life should not entail having to stay twenty pounds thinner than when you were twenty and to fix your husband's breakfast plate while he runs off to do important work and you are left to struggle into yet another pair of stocking to give yet another unimportant speech to yet another group of self involved people.

In one quick moment Sylvie's life is changed when Richard's extramarital affair makes headlines and she and her two daughters, Lizzie a recovering addict and Diana an emergency room physician - who is trapped in a loveless marriage, and beginning an affair of her own, all converge and with the strength of family these three women come through their own torment to find a strength and purpose that they didn't know had existed.

Those who say you can never go home again have never had the blessing of actually going home. Going home to a place that is both a sanctuary and a reprieve. This is the gift that Sylvie has given to both her daughters and through them, to herself.

I have never read a Jennifer Weiner book before, I didn't think that an offering like this could actually resonate with me, but I was wrong. I don' t know if all her books will hit me this way, but this was definitely the right book at the right time.