Chrissy’s Review: What Could Be Saved by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz

What Could Be Saved
written by Liese O’Halloran Schwarz
published by Atria Books, 2021

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Apple Books, Target, Kobo, Book Depository, Goodreads

Disclosure: I won an advanced reader’s edition of this book from a giveaway hosted by the publisher.

Did I enjoy this book? I really did enjoy this book. It is beautifully written and unforgettable. What Could Be Saved is one of those books that grabs your attention from page one and won’t let go even after you finish the last page.

Told in alternating timelines, the book starts in 2019 when Laura Preston receives a call from someone claiming to be her long-lost brother. The story unfolds from there with flashbacks to 1972 when the Preston family lived in Bangkok and when Philip disappeared.

What Could Be Saved is hard to describe because you feel so many emotions while reading it. It is heartbreaking and lovely. Devastating and beautiful. Hopeful and sad. The relationships are complex. The timeline jumps are well written. There are so many secrets to be uncovered. Most of all, you want to know what happened to Philip all those years ago, but you really don’t want to know. But you have to know if this person who contacted Laura is really Philip. You can’t not read on, you have to find out.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely. This isn’t a light book, but it was a great read.
 

 
About the book – from Goodreads: An enthralling, redemptive novel set in Bangkok in 1972 and Washington, DC, in 2019 about an expatriate child who goes missing, whose family is contacted decades later by a man claiming to be the vanished boy.

Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister Bea as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared forty years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea’s warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers.

Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston live in a beautiful house behind a high wall, raising their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. In these exotic surroundings, Genevieve strives to create a semblance of the life they would have had at home in the US—ballet and riding classes for the children, impeccable dinner parties, a meticulously kept home. But in truth, Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve finds herself drawn into a passionate affair with her husband’s boss, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers of a rapidly changing world and a country they don’t really understand.

Alternating between past and present as all of the secrets are revealed, What Could Be Saved is an unforgettable novel about a family shattered by loss and betrayal, and the beauty and hope that can exist even in the midst of brokenness.

 

 

 

* This post contains affiliate links.

** This post first appeared on Every Free Chance Books (everyfreechance.com) on March 10, 2021.