Review of The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett

In this heartwarming story of wonderfully faulted characters who face tragedy and often make a mess of things, loyalty and steadfastness overcome all and allow a makeshift family to heal, find adventure, discover their individual strengths, and realize that they're meant to be together forever.

PJ Halliday is 63 and won the million-dollar lottery. Now he's about to set off on a cross-country road trip to track down his high-school sweetheart following the death of his former nemesis and rival.

But not everything in his life has been luck and adventure. PJ has weathered terrible tragedies in his life. His oldest daughter died as a teenager, and the grief destroyed his marriage. He's self-obsessed and sloppy, and he's allowed himself to become distant from his only living daughter, now a young adult who's drifting in her life. He's spent years drowning his sorrows in drink, and now that he's had three heart attacks (and secretly given away almost all of his money, while living in a hoarding-type home situation), he realizes his time may be almost up.

But before he can set out for Arizona to try to win back his young love, his estranged brother dies, and PJ becomes the guardian for his brother's grandchildren. So he packs them into the car, enlists his grumbling grown daughter to help him, and hits the road.

When I read Hartnett's novel Unlikely Animals, I said it was an irresistible, oddball tragicomedy with heart, in which characters explore the limits and solidity of friendship and family loyalty, show mistakes and imperfections, and cling to hope. While The Road to Tender Hearts is its own story, the same charming elements show up here: tough situations are real but are surrounded by lighthearted, zany circumstances; characters are faulted and make missteps but learn to forgive themselves and those around them; loyalty and steadfastness serve as bridges to love and caring; and animals work with magical realism to shift and affect outcomes.

While the characters in The Road to Tender Hearts face sometimes devastating turns of events, the tone of the story is such that you won't wonder whether a happy ending is coming. Past hurts aren't erased, but love overcomes, and the ending is sweet sweet sweet.

Hartnett employs dramatic irony, as the reader knows the full story of protagonists' motivations, abilities, and true selves, while her characters do not.

I received a prepublication edition of The Road to Tender Hearts, scheduled for publication April 29, courtesy of Ballantine Books and NetGalley.

More Annie Hartnett love

Annie Hartnett is also the author of the wonderful novel Unlikely Animals, which was one of my Bossy Favorite Fiction Reads of the Year when I read it, as well as the novel Rabbit Cake, which I have yet to read.