A troubled young mother yearns for a shot at redemption in this heartbreaking yet hopeful story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover.
After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild. Everyone in her daughter's life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself.
The only person who hasn't closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna's daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna's life, both would risk losing the trust of everyone important to them.
The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.
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Meet Kenna. “She’s responsible for the accidental death of someone she was in love with…she went to prison for it and was forced to give up her own child. She finally shows back up hoping to meet her.” Then she makes out with a bartender in his truck. When they discover the bartender was her boyfriend’s best friend, he prevents her from meeting her daughter. “He’s the only thing linking me to my daughter…he’s one of the things keeping me from my daughter.” Her community is “taking the worst moment of Kenna’s life and…making that moment who she is. That isn’t fair…Justice and empathy couldn’t both fit inside that courtroom…There’s room in a tragedy this size for everyone to be both right and wrong…There will never be a good time to take the side of the girl who ruined their lives.” But Kenna’s “a good person…who had one bad night. It happens to the best of us. The worst of us. All of us. Some of us are just luckier than others, and our bad moments have fewer casualties…Time, distance, and devastation allow people enough opportunity to craft villains out of people they don’t even know. But…she was a victim. We all were.” “There are people who find peace in forgiveness, and then there are others who look at forgiveness as a betrayal…Some things can be forgiven, but sometimes an action is so painful the memory of it can still crush a person ten years down the road…Regret keeps you stuck on pause….make sure you hit play so you don’t forget to move forward…I forgive you and you forgive me, and we go forward together…Now that I’ve forgiven myself, the reminders of him only make me smile.” “There are people like Kenna everywhere, in every town. People who feel alone in the world, no matter where they’re located…this story takes place wherever you are in the world. No matter how whole our neighbors appear on the outside, we have no idea how many broken pieces they’re made up of on the inside. Reading is a hobby, but for some of us, it’s an escape from the difficulties we face.” To all who escape into books, Reminders of Him is an invitation to “live in the lavish worlds inside these books, rather than the bleak world inside this prison” of an unhappy reality.