This book is a sprawling history of an interesting family, and the characters do feel very rounded out and full. I enjoyed the book until the ending, which I found to be very abrupt. After spending so much time showing us who these characters were and what made them tick, we didn’t get to see any of the hard conversations that needed to be had, nor the aftermath of them. I read the last line and then flipped to the next page...surely there had to at least be an epilogue? But no. I understand some of the reasons for this ending, but I’m not sure that they completely justified ending without any resolution for the main characters. ( )

Every now and then a book comes along that is so good you think the author must have written it "with just ME in Mind" Well I think courtney Sullivan wrote this book just for me as I loved every moment spent with this novel and I am starting to miss the characters already.
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The Story of Irish Immigration is always close to my heart and I never tire of Non fiction accounts or Historical fiction done well and not too IRISHED up. I think Courtney Sullivan gets it right, this was Ireland of the 50s, this was Irish Immigration of the 50s and this was the Irish settling in America and raising their American Children in the 60s/70s and I have listened to numerous Aunts and Uncles stories over the years and Saints for all Occasions captures the Journey, the emotions and feel of the time for me. The plot is well paced and entertaining and the characters are real Irish Women, living in fear of the church, of their families, their communities and mostly in fear of themselves. Making do with.....and putting up with...... just to safe face. I loved the characters of Nora and Theresa and their complicated relationships with each other and their families.

I rated this Book 5 stars because its just a good old fashioned story, beautifully written, that touched me and I found myself looking forward to picking up this book every evening to learn more about the Flynn sisters.

I think this would make an interesting book club as so much to discuss in this one.

I think there is one teeny tiny error at the beginning of the novel, but its too teeny tiny to even mention ( )

This was a Goodreads Giveaway - 4.5 Stars. It took me awhile to get around to reading this and I found it instantly engaging once I did finally begin it. This was a well-written, interesting read. I did find the character of Nora to be frustrating but is suited her in a way. I would be interested in reading other books by this author. ( )

Irish Catholic family drama with focus on the relationship between two sisters. I'm not sure how much you'd appreciate this if you don't come from this family background yourself but for me it all rings quite true.

Zoomed right through it. ( )

Read for my book club. In short, tedious. I get things were different in the 50s and I get that I'm not female and a lot of the issues in the story were female-centric. But I hate stories about secrets that are religious and cultural shaming. It was just one scene after another of people who were pointlessly confused by Nora's sad life. It didn't go anywhere useful. The characters didn't grow in any useful way. They just kept going nowhere for decades. A thoroughly useless story.

The writing itself was ok and I'll share one sentence that I wanted to remember (page 274 hardcopy): "Her secret was like a diamond long buried kept under pressure then dug up and made into something so much more valuable than the thing it was to begin with."

A couple of notes from other reviews to share with my book club:

- Nora: seriously unlikeable, uninteresting, boring, cold hearted. None of the characters are very likeable, especially Nora, whose children suffer because of her. A saga of a sad insecure woman who negatively affected several generations of her family

- The most stereotypical depiction of a lesbian I've ever read. I was waiting for the author to say that Bridget was blasting Indigo Girls on the way to the house.

- The only part I found interesting was Theresa's journey to becoming a nun. I could have read more about that. I learned a bit from that. Everything else made me want to bang my head against the wall.

- Loved the first section of Nora's and Theresa's immigration. It built up some grand issues, then the book went crosswise. Character stories were all over the place, political/social commentary that was distracting and brought nothing positive to the story, details were either irrelevant or missing, no character development, etc. Started out great and then became a horribly boring, convoluted read.

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