Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and Net Galley for the ARC.

The lesson from this book is to live in the here and now rather than looking towards the future and not being present! It tells the story of Marigold, a sixty-six year old woman who has been diagnosed with dementia. Marigold lives in a small English village and is much beloved by her family, neighbours and friends in the village. We go through with Marigold the progress of her disease and how her family copes with her decline.

It was difficult for me to read given that my mother and mother-in-law are in their 80s and 90s, respectively with not so great memory. You wonder if they will decline like Marigold. I found the beginning of the book slow moving but enjoyed the later parts of the book when the story expanded to include Daisy, Marigold's daughter who returned from Italy and found herself helping to care for her mother.

I enjoy most of Santa's books but I found this difficult to read and scary to think that this could be in my future. This is a testament to what a great writer Santa is. Her characters are well developed and so real. As always, Santa's descriptions of locations is phenomenal and makes you feel like you are right there in the story.

I received this book from NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Canada to read and review. I would like to thank them for the opportunity to read this beautiful book. I was so moved by this book I was in tears. The author created wonderful characters that I felt like I had known my whole life. While Marigold is the main character, each of the other family members and villagers blend into the story, yet they each have their own story to share. I have to say that the Grandmother is a wonderful character that brings some lightness to this serious topic. I don’t want to spoil the book for anyone so I will just say the author did an amazing job of explaining Marigold’s “problem” and I understood the entire topic better than before reading this book. If you are looking for a heartbreaking yet heartwarming book full of family, love and Friends than this is the book for you.

This book was absolutely amazing. It touched on a really good tough subject but the author handled it with dignity and respect.

The characters she devised were well rounded and I came to love some of them dearly. Especially the two main ones.

Being from a small village in Ireland, I believe she captured the true essence of what it means to be part of a village and how neighbors once all the gossip has.died down will rally around you should you need help.

It's.great this will come out nearing the end of Summer as it feels to me a perfect book to snuggle up with while covered with a blanket while you read it out on your patio or at the cottage in the cooler evenings/nights.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Net Galley for providing me with the advance reader digital copy. I will definitely be buying this for my book shelf come release day.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publishing house and the author for the opportunity to read a complimentary advance reader copy of this book in return for review based upon my honest opinion.

This book should come with a disclaimer, you will need a box of tissues to finish it. What a lovely heart wrenching story about family and community, love and loss and dealing with a family member who slowly gets lost with dementia. The characters in the story were so honest and compelling, they were so easy to identify with and their story just swept me away. I spent most of my time reading this book trying not to cry and the rest of the time sobbing. It made me smile, it made me cry, it is a book that I will think about long after I have read it. So beautifully written, such a lovely read. This author never fails to give a beautiful book.

<I>Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for providing me with an eARC of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</I>

<U>Here and Now</U> absolutely destroyed me. I think I spent 3/4 of the novel resisting the urge to uncontrollably sob. Dementia is cruel, and watching the progression of someone spiral is difficult beyond words. Montefiore's ability to accurately (and with feeling) describe Marigold's decline and how it affected the people around her was so arresting. As a paramedic one of the calls that breaks my heart the most is dealing with patients who have dementia and thinking about the young, strong, independent people with love and a a life full of choices they used to be. Montefiore captured this beautifully. One of my favourite reads of 2020.