Pieces of Happiness by Anne Ostby
I bought this book when I saw it advertised on one of the books sites I belong to. The cover caught my eye along with the title. I read the synopsis and thought perhaps it might be a good read but I was wrong. It was a great read! I loved…loved…loved this book!
Perhaps the reason I like it so much was because I am in the same season of life as the women in this book. Sina, Ateca, Ingrid, Maya, Lisbeth and Kat have all had different experiences. Sina, Ingrid, Maya, LIsbeth and Kat were friends in their youth. They drifted apart over the years but Kat brings them all together on a tropical island to perhaps live out their days or discover new things about themselves.
I could resonate with many of their feelings. I felt the yearning for a simplicity in their later years. And the regrets. We all have regrets. We all have ideas in our mind of what was only to find out our perceptions in our youth might have been skewed.
Journey with these women. You will laugh, cry and be invested in their lives by the end of the book. This was an unexpected treat of a read. I highly recommend it. I would give it more than five stars but reading is a journey each person experiences in different ways.
A novel of five lifelong friends who, in their sixties, decide to live together on a cocoa farm in Fiji, where they not only start a chocolate business but strengthen their friendships and rediscover themselves.
“I’ve planted my feet on Fijian earth and I intend to stay here until the last sunset. Why don’t you join me? Leave behind everything that didn’t work out!”
When Sina, Maya,
Ingrid, and Lisbeth each receive a letter in the mail posing the same
question, the answer is obvious. Their old high school friend Kat—Kat
the adventurer, Kat who spread her wings and took off as soon as they
graduated—has extended the invitation of a lifetime: Come live with me
on my cocoa farm in Fiji. Come spend the days eating chocolate and
gabbing like teenagers once again, free from men, worries, and cold.
Come grow old in paradise, together, as sisters. Who could say no?
Now in their sixties, the friends have all but resigned themselves
to the cards they’ve been dealt. There’s Sina, a single mom with
financial woes; gentle Maya who feels the world slipping away from her;
Ingrid, the perennial loner; Lisbeth, a woman with a seemingly
picture-perfect life; and then Kat, who is recently widowed. As they
adjust to their new lives together, the friends are watched over by
Ateca, Kat’s longtime housekeeper, who oftentimes knows the women better
than they know themselves and recognizes them for what they are: like
“a necklace made of shells: from the same beach but all of them
different.” Surrounded by an azure-blue ocean, cocoa trees, and a local
culture that is fascinatingly, joyfully alien, the friends find a new
purpose in starting a business making chocolate: bittersweet, succulent
pieces of happiness.
A story of love, hope, and chocolate,
PIECES OF HAPPINESS will reaffirm your faith in friendship, second
chances, and the importance of indulging one’s sweet tooth
About the Author
Anne Ostby is a Norwegian author, b. 1958. She has eleven published books for adults, YA, and children. Her latest novel, Pieces of Happiness, is sold to eleven different countries, and will be out in English in June (Doubleday Books).
Anne Ostby has spent the last 27 years as a global nomad, living in nine different countries. Her novels frequently discuss questions of identity in an international setting, and depict women’s lives in various cultures. She currently lives in East Timor.
You can find her books on Amazon
