Lately I have been reading a lot of novels that take place in Germany. It is a new trend that I hope to continue since I am quickly becoming fascinated by the chick-lit and women's literature being written by German authors. Almost all of the novels I have read I ended up liking but thought a little tweaking would take the novel from good to great in my eyes.

This novel focuses on Iris who has inherited her grandmother's home in the German countryside. Iris and her family seem quite stilted with each other and you quickly find out about a deceased cousin who died at the grandmother's home. There also seems to be a touch of "magic" in this novel that was very reminiscent of Sarah Addison Allen's novels when you read about the house and all of the people that came to live in it.

At first the novel starts off very slowly and jumps around a lot which started to drive me a bit crazy. I am not a big fan of flashbacks in novels unless it is done well and unfortunately I don't think Ms. Hagena did this very well. To me this was a very straightforward tale but we often jumped around discussing characters and then switching back to the present, and jumping into Iris memories here and there. To me it led to a very jumbled book though in the end I did like the novel. I do want to say that I think that Ms. Hagena writes very well but as another reviewer noted at times due to the lengthy descriptions I found myself wanting to say "come on and get on with it" while I was reading.

I would still recommend this novel and think that those that enjoy Ms. Allen's or Ms. Alice Hoffman's novels will enjoy this one.

Please note I received this novel via the Amazon Vine Program.