Carol lives in a small town in Ireland. She is divorced with a son. She is a school teacher and falls in love with one of her students dad. Declan is much older than Carol but they suit each other really well. Declan's wife abandoned him and his two children. His children aren't too excepting of Carol. Declan gets Alzheimer's and his children use all of their power to do what they want with their dad and his house. Carol has to decide what to do with her life. In the midst of all of this a huge mystery happens. This story is a mystery story with some good twists and turns. I really enjoyed Carol's mother Moira . Moira knows exactly what to do or say in every situation. I enjoyed this book. The mystery was good and I was intrigued.

What a good story! Norton is an expert and the many characters he writes about in Forever Home. I was invested in their relationships and outcome. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Four stars.

Forever Home is the story of two families and many houses. Carol and Declan are a couple (but not married), but when Declan develops Alzheimer's, Declan's kids decide to sell the house Declan and Carol lived in, and the book focuses on what Carol does when this happens. What I really liked about the book is that the houses are characters: Carol's parents live in a house that is not suited for them; Declan's son lives in a house that does not reflect who he and his partner are. I think the multiple characters in this book were well drawn and there's plenty of interesting twists and turns to keep you going through the book. Well done!

I was very, very pleasantly surprised with this book! I should have expected as much knowing that the author is British! British writers tend to be a lot more cheeky, sarcastic, unromantic, & witty. Being that this was technically a romance, I went into this with some hesitation as I rarely read romances and way way more often than not feel like they are way too predictable and mushy.

'Forever Home' was anything but predictable. There was also the fact that the MC's were older, mature characters rather than your typical romance novel that tends to believe that there is no romance once a woman turns 40. Again I should have expected more from a British author! This felt so very relatable in so many ways, what starts off the story as seemingly some regular gossip, winds up really turning the lives of our MCs upside down. The adults behave as adults, mature and sacrificing for their children, putting their own wants and needs before their own and sadly putting their own happiness on the back burner, and the children (even tho they are adults as well...but YOUNGER adults) are of course the ones that are rigid, unmoving, and unaccepting. I thought it was interesting that older people have a way of being portrayed as the kind of people that are stuck in their ways and find differences and changes hard to accept, but in this case Norton flipped the whole story on it's ass and wrote the younger generation as the ones who had the rigid expectations.

I actually had a really great time reading this, there was enough interesting angles & surprises to keep it from being your typical formulaic romance book, there were some great characters that I grew very attached to as well as characters that I very much disliked but then witnessed growth & found myself feeling differently. There is nothing better than a character driven story that can bring you to love a character that you started out hating, I think that is an author with a job well done.

This didn't fall into too many of the cheesy romance tropes, but there were enough of them to satisfy the average romance reader, but I just think this had a sharper wit and funnier edge than most romances. This still made for very easy reading as I flew through this in two sittings, but I think the people who mainly read literary fiction or the people who despise romances might give this a try. It is unmistakably a romance, but there are also complex relationship dynamics that aren't typical, intricate emotions and complicated familial relationships and all kinds of people who have to learn how to adapt and compromise in order to save the thing they love most, their families. This was like those sour patch commercials, first it's sour, but then it's sweet. A 4 star romance as far as romances go, which coming from me is high praise!