June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After Cassie Danvers grandmother June passes away Cassie finds herself holed up in the old family mansion in rural St. Jude, Ohio as she mourns. Surrounded by the ghosts of the past Cassie finds herself questioning everything she’s ever known when a man shows up at her door claiming that she has inherited the fortune of an actor Jack Montgomery.

Jack has said in his will that Cassie is his granddaughter but of course his own children are going to fight to see that the fortune doesn’t go to this girl they’ve never known. As Cassie digs into the past she finds there was so much she never knew about grandma June and so many secrets that have been buried for years.

June takes place in two different alternating timelines throughout the story. First we meet Cassie who is June’s granddaughter in the present as she deals with the loss of the who she thinks is the last member of her family in her grandmother. Then the story switches ever few chapters back to June, Cassie’s grandmother, back in 1955 to tell the secrets that she’d hid from her family.

The book got off to a bit of a slow start for me, I liked Cassie well enough and had my interest peaked a bit as to whether she really was related to Jack but I think a part of me couldn’t help but question why she didn’t just do the DNA test and get it all over with. Of course if that had happened we wouldn’t have the suspenseful read that the rest of the book brings so once we got into June’s story I felt it pick up a bit more. In the end the book reminded me a bit of Fried Green Tomatoes where we get the look back into a bit of a scandalous past so the farther you get the juicier the story became.

Overall, a bit of a slow start for me but really enjoyed it in the end.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.