All Our Beautiful Goodbyes: A Novel

Set on Sable Island, a crescent off the coast of Nova Scotia, All Our Beautiful Goodbyes is itself a beautiful book. It is a love story, but the love is not just between Emma Clarkson and any man. It is the love she has for the island she grew up on, for its beauty and the life upon it, especially the wild horses which roam its shores. It is also a love of psychology, and a love of the human mind. On remote Sable Island, Emma has little experience with that, but that will not stop her from touching the lives of many, through generations.

MacLean, a romance novelist as well, clearly has a knack for writing about love. Emma’s love for everyone and everything around her saturates the novel, making it a rich and endearing read. Some of the side characters do not receive the same depth or empathy from the narrative that Emma does, causing me to knock a star off the rating, but that was the only part of the book I did not enjoy. I highly recommend this book to fans of historical and women’s fiction.