"Heartwarming rags to riches tale"
Reviewed by Sandra Wurman
Posted May 24, 2021
Romance Contemporary | Women's Fiction
What does it mean to be really rich. Filthy rich, successful and gorgeous to boot. Well to some it’s the dream come true. To others, it is a means to an end. To Sarah, it is a way to support herself and her sons. For Sarah, her intelligence and drive brought her great riches and success. Her businesses have thrived. There is of course a price. Sarah had to learn how to juggle her work and her boys. The boys are her personal priority. So Sarah’s days are often 20+ hours long.
LOST AND FOUND FAMILY is a rags to riches story in a totally unique package. There are lots of ways to judge being rich. Not always in dollars. For Sarah, her life has been poor in so many ways. Needy for sure. The most valuable item missing from Sarah’s life has been love and family.
Sarah’s business model has been designed as a family unit of respect and earnest work toward shared goals. Sarah rewards honesty and respect and loyalty. Sarah’s husband was a disappointment on many levels except for one, her sons. Lost and found family is one woman’s search for that elusive something she always wanted, coveted - family. And belonging to something that didn’t have an expiration date.
Sarah’s start was the foster system and then to an even bleaker life with an uncle. The fact that she survived and emerged as a wonderful human being was in itself amazing. Sarah could not have done this on her own. She relied on her business family and they came through for her just as she rewarded them.
Jennifer Ryan had to dig deep to create Sarah without making her an unrealistic caricature. Sarah just may be Jennifer Ryan’s most complex character to date. And even though Sarah may seem almost too perfect we get to see how complex her life is. Sarah doesn’t have the freedom of mistakes. Too much at stake.
There are many types of families. In LOST AND FOUND FAMILY, Jennifer Ryan showcases a truly unique gathering of folk that is connected in a twisted illogical social group. It May sound odd but it works in both Sarah’s and Jennifer Ryan’s world.
Lots of characters to meet in LOST AND FOUND FAMILY. Many with flaws that are the root cause for many of the conflicts. But in the end, these are all folk that somehow belong to Sarah’s world. Jennifer Ryan masterfully sets the scene for Sarah’s new world with grace, heart and integrity. Sure, there are some perhaps unrealistic reaches when the author's pen becomes creative. Keep in mind it is all for the better good. In this case all for Sarah and her boys.
SUMMARY
If you love Jill Shalvis, Lori Wilde, and Susan Mallery, then you won't want to miss New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Ryan’s riveting new novel about family, secrets, and a woman ready to embrace who she really is by facing down her past.
As Sara Anderson drives up to the house in Carmel, she knows she’s on an impossible quest to make peace with the one person who truly hates her. For years, Sara has hidden the truth about her late husband’s lies from their children and their grandmother. When her mother-in-law, Margaret, threatens her with legal action to see the boys, Sara strikes a bargain: she’ll bring them for a six-week visit, hoping the boys, at least, will find connection and happiness with their extended family.
It doesn’t help that attorney and part-time rancher Luke Thompson lives right next door, and as an old friend of the family’s he’s agreed to investigate Sara’s past. Luke doesn’t feel comfortable poking around in the very successful tech CEO’s private life. What he finds is a truth very different from the one he’s been led to believe. Far from being cold and unloving, Sara is devoted to her boys and as at home on the ranch as she is in a boardroom.
All Sara ever wanted was a family, and all Luke wants now is her love. The time has come to reveal the terrible secrets that have been kept for so long. In losing the past, a new love—and family—can be found.
Excerpt“When I was young, I lived on my uncle’s ranch. Not a ranch as nice as yours, but a run-down place. The barn was falling apart, the house and outbuildings were all dilapidated, but the horses were well tended. My uncle raised them and sold them to keep the ranch, but he never seemed to profit. He spent his life trying to hold on.”
He couldn’t believe she’d open up about the one thing he really wanted to know about without him prompting her.
She sighed. “It made him mean, that constant battle to keep the bank from taking everything.” She kissed Ace on the nose and stared into his eyes. “Anyway, one of the ranch hands had a radio he brought to work each day. I’d listen to the songs and sing along. It was the only form of entertainment I had. I loved music.” Wistfulness filled her voice. She went quiet for a moment. “When he got fired, I missed the music, but I had a knack for remembering the songs, so I would sing while I worked. It gave me comfort. The horses never seemed to mind if I got a lyric wrong, or couldn’t hit a note.” She gave Luke a half smile over her shoulder.
“Why’d the guy get fired?”
“For bringing the radio and making me happy.” The matter-of-fact way she said it didn’t hide the anger and resentment and remorse. “Like I said, my uncle was a mean man.”
Luke wanted to ask how mean. He wanted to know if he’d hurt Sarah.
The answer was clear in the way she spoke.
“When he found out the guy liked my singing and I liked the music, he got rid of both. He said I was distracting his men. I needed to concentrate on my job, and not some fanciful pastime. Since I’d cost him a worker, too, I had to do my job and his.”
“How old were you?”
Her hand stopped brushing Ace and her eyes stared back into the past. “Thirteen. There was never any more music on the ranch. I only sang when I was alone at night in the barn with the horses.”
“Why were you in the barn at night?” He hazarded a guess, but he wanted to hear her say it.
“I slept in a small room on the floor in the back of the barn.” Not in the warm house, in her own room, in a soft bed.
His throat went tight with sadness. “Did you go to school?”
“Why do you care?”
Because it kills me to think of you living in a crap barn, cold and lonely with no music. Those words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. “Because I want to know who you really are.”
Why did you burn the place down?
She stared at him. “I’m not who Margaret described to you.”
“It appears you’re not.”
She pressed her lips together, then answered. “My first three foster families sent me to school, but when I was eight, my uncle showed up and took me to the ranch. He needed me to take care of the horses. I didn’t go back to a real school again until I was eighteen. Senior year at MIT, I met Sean.”
“Where were your parents?”
“My mother drank herself to death when I was four. My father didn’t know I existed until I was sixteen.”
Wow! “That must have been really hard.”
She nodded. “It was.” The way she said it meant he hadn’t even scratched the surface of how she felt about her tragic childhood.
“Did you like living on the ranch?”
“I liked the horses. They were all I had growing up.” Sadness filled those words. Not anger or rage.
It didn’t add up to her setting fire to the ranch.
She set the brush on the nearby workbench. “I’ve got to get back before the kids wake up. Sorry I caused you so much trouble this morning.”
He stepped in front of her before she retreated. “Why did you burn the ranch to the ground?” He had to ask. She’d had a rotten childhood, but that didn’t justify what she did.
She slowly looked up and right into his eyes. “Didn’t Margaret tell you why I did it? Of course, I never even told Sean, so I can only imagine the explanation she gave you, besides her general opinion of me, which is that I’m evil and therefore I do evil things. Right? I burned down the ranch. I killed her son. I took his business. I keep her grandchildren from her. Everything I do is just for spite and my own selfishness.”
So, she’d never told Sean why she’d done it. It surprised him, and made him want to get the answer all the more.
“It wasn’t some whim. You had a reason. And don’t tell me it was because your uncle sold the horses like the police report says. That’s bullshit.”
Her head tilted and her eyes filled with anger. “You got my sealed records?”
Shit. “Yes.” What else could he say?
“Let me guess, so you can use it against me in court to take my kids from me. You want to and make my whole life about something I did when I was just a hopeless kid.”
No he didn’t. He wanted to know the truth. “Why did you do it? What would make you do something so drastic?” He demanded the answer with the urgency of his questions.
“Because I was in a rage!” Her whole body vibrated with anger and resentment that he’d insist on an answer and that he’d violated her privacy based on an unsubstantiated claim from Margaret. “I couldn’t take one more thing being snatched away from me.”
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