Comfort Songs by Kimberly Fish – A Book Review

I’m kicking off Lone Star Book Blog Tour’s REVIEWAPALOOZA of Kimberly Fish’s wonderful novel Comfort Songs! This was a book that

COMFORT SONGS

a companion novel to Comfort Plans
by
KIMBERLY FISH

Genre: Contemporary Romance / Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Fish Tales, LLC 
Date of Publication: September 19, 2019
Number of Pages: 348

Scroll down for the Comfort Songs giveaway!

Award-winning author of Comfort Plans, Kimberly Fish, delivers a novel about family, forgiveness, and the seeds of second chances.

Eight years ago, Autumn Joy Worthington, still reeling from the bitter divorce of her Grammy-Award-winning parents, endured the betrayal of a man who’d promised her a wedding. Running from pain seemed the logical response. Reinventing herself in Comfort, Texas as a lavender grower, she creates a wildly successful gardening haven that draws in tourists and establishes an identity far removed from her parents’ fame. Her mother’s retirement from stardom inspires AJ to offer her refuge and nurse the dream that they could move past old hurts and the tarnish of the music industry … to find friendship. A grandmother in the early stages of dementia and the return of AJ’s father complicate the recovery, but nothing sets the fragile reality spinning like the arrival of Nashville music executive, Luke English. 

As Alzheimer’s slowly knocks away the filters of their family, AJ comes to appreciate the true meanings of love and forgiveness — and that the power of redemption can generate from the most unlikely sources. When AJ uncovers the grit to make hard choices, she also discovers that the flowers that bloom the brightest can have the most tangled roots.

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Comfort Songs is a heartwarming, beautifully written, easy to read (and harder to put down) contemporary fiction novel that I read in the course of a weekend. It owned that rare magic where you don’t want to put it down all while wanting to stretch out your moments in the book.

This is a story of family and forgiveness, and oh, goodness, is there a LOT of room for forgiveness in this tale! The main character, AJ, is likable and relatable, and you will quickly find yourself wanting to shake everyone around her for what she was put through in her childhood.

AJ is, quite frankly, a saint in my mind, surrounded by a cast of characters that would push me to my wit’s end – and that’s a good indication of her giving nature. Her grandmother is a handful, and along with housekeeper Penny, both veer on the side of nasty AJ’s music star mother, July, is concerned. Both of her parents are self-centered and bitter when it comes to the other. Both have also had their share of issues with alcohol. Combine all of this with a previous heartbreak (one that also involves her mother and the music industry) and you can see how it all led to AJ’s inability to trust others.

While this is primarily AJ’s story, I love that we get to hear a few different voices. I love that we get a little peek into Luke’s head while the story is unfolding as lets the reader develop a bit of trust in his character. While the story has a developing romance, it’s more a story of relationships.

Inez’s own story is interspersed in flashbacks, and as it unfolds, you see where the need for control is a central theme, and how a need for control, repeating over generations, becomes a source of heartache. In Inez’s case, she becomes the person she hated most. She’s a complicated character, and Fish has handled her beautifully.

In fact, I think the character development is one of the strengths of the book. Both July and Roger were more layered than I expected them to be, both evolving but still holding on to some of their drama and perhaps less flattering traits.

Author Kimberly Fish is no stranger to the Lone Star book bloggers. While Comfort Songs returns to the Texas Hill Country town of Comfort, it works well as a standalone novel. (It’s a pet peeve of mine when books are written as standalones and bring in characters previously introduced in other novels but do such heavy hinting at their past history that you’re left to figure out what all those badly dropped references mean. Fish does no such thing here.)

Fans of Mary Kay Andrews and Barbara Delinsky will love this story. Comfort Songs was a delight and I’m looking forward to more stories set it in this lovely Texas town.

Kimberly Fish is a professional writer with almost thirty years of media experience. She’s been telling stories far longer. She published her first novel, a WWII historical fiction novel, because of a true story in her adopted hometown that was too good to ignore.  She quickly followed that success with a sequel. Since then, she’s continued writing fiction and added a contemporary second-chance romance series set in Comfort, Texas, to her list of fun, fast-paced novels. Kimberly lives with her family in East Texas.

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Comfort Songs GIVEAWAY!

SIGNED COPY OF COMFORT SONGS
+  HUMMINGBIRD FARMS HAND CREAM & HAND SOAP

OCTOBER 22-NOVEMBER 1, 2019
(U.S. Only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway


VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

10/22/19	Review	Momma on the Rocks
10/22/19	BONUS Promo	All the Ups and Downs
10/23/19	Review	Reading by Moonlight
10/23/19	Review	KayBee’s Book Shelf
10/24/19	Review	Sybrina’s Book Blog
10/25/19	Review	Sydney Young, Stories
10/25/19	Review	Bibliotica
10/26/19	Review	That’s What She’s Reading
10/27/19	Review	Book Fidelity
10/28/19	Review	The Book Review
10/28/19	Review	Missus Gonzo
10/29/19	Review	Forgotten Winds
10/30/19	Review	The Clueless Gent
10/30/19	Review	StoreyBook Reviews
10/31/19	Review	Hall Ways Blog
10/31/19	Review	Carpe Diem Chronicles

If this book sounds interesting to you, check out other contemporary fiction books I’ve featured via a Lone Star Book Blog Tour – the giveaways may be over, but the books shouldn’t be missed!

Lone Star Book Blog Tour (and Giveaway): The Theory of Happily Ever After

Lone Star Book Blog Tour: Under a Summer Sky