SERENDIPITOUS INTROS/TEASERS: KEEPSAKE — JULY 17

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Just grab your book and share the opening lines; then find another excerpt that “teases” the reader.

I’m sharing today from Keepsake, by Kristina Riggle.

Synopsis:  From the critically acclaimed author of Real Life & Liars and Things We Didn’t Say comes a timely and provocative novel that asks: What happens when the things we own become more important than the people we love?

Trish isn’t perfect. She’s divorced and raising two kids—so of course her house isn’t pristine. But she’s got all the important things right and she’s convinced herself that she has it all under control. That is, until the day her youngest son gets hurt and Child Protective Services comes calling. It’s at that moment when Trish is forced to consider the one thing she’s always hoped wasn’t true: that she’s living out her mother’s life as a compulsive hoarder.

The last person Trish ever wanted to turn to for help is her sister, Mary—meticulous, perfect Mary, whose house is always spotless . . . and who moved away from their mother to live somewhere else, just like Trish’s oldest child has. But now, working together to get Trish’s disaster of a home into livable shape, two very different sisters are about to uncover more than just piles of junk, as years of secrets, resentments, obsessions, and pain are finally brought into the light.

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Intro:  The stranger gave me an empty smile.  It was flat and mechanical:  the forced grin of someone who delivers bad news all day long.  She was holding out a business card, and I was refusing to take it.

Ayana Reese, the card said.  What kind of name is Ayana?  On her left hand, which was clutching her notepad, I saw no wedding ring.  I could bet every shingle on my roof that this girl was barely out of college and had no children.  She would have a pamphlet and a workbook and seminars, but she’d never pushed a child into the world and felt what I felt both times I did it:  that our bond was powerful and perfect and would not be broken.  By anyone.

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Teaser:  If Ayana was disgusted by my messy house, she didn’t show it.  She probably dealt all the time with meth heads and gangbangers who had loaded guns on the coffee table and shit on the walls. (1%)

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Are you intrigued? I know that I am…and I feel as though I’ve had a birdseye view of this world from the side of the “stranger,” due to my three decades in social work.

Now I can’t wait to see what the rest of you are excerpting today!