Review: The Resurrection of Tess Blessing by Lesley Kagen

The Resurrection of Tess Blessing

by Lesley Kagen

Publisher: SparkPress

Pages: 325

Format: book

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  After she's diagnosed with breast cancer, forty-nine-year old Tess Blessing sets forth on a mission to complete her TO-DO List before, what she's sure is, her impending death. She needs to make peace with her estranged sister, Birdie, scatter her mother's long-kept ashes, rescue her daughter, Haddie, from the grip of an eating disorder, guide her teenage son, Henry, through a bumpy adolescence, and reignite the spark in her almost thirty-year marriage to her husband, Will. 

Tess is aided on her quest by narrator, Grace, who lends the story its most brilliant elements: subtle magical realism and deep psychological complexity. Is Grace an imaginary friend, guardian angel, or a part of Tess that knows better than she? The Resurrection of Tess Blessing is by turns poignant, gritty, spiritually uplifting, and hilarious as hell.

Kritters Thoughts:  A book with quite an interesting character who is trying to keep a lot of things in the air and I am not sure she is doing it all that well.  Tess has grown up a lot since the novella reviewed this morning and she has created quite the to do list to accomplish.  She has quite the hurdles in her life to overcome - a medical diagnosis for her and for her daughter, a husband who doesn't seem connected in the relationship and a son who is doing the teenage years.

This as well as the novella have an interesting narrator - an imaginary friend.  I am not sure that I enjoyed having this really different narration - I didn't mind it as much in the novella due to the girls being childhood ages, but being adults and having this imaginary friend tell the story was just a little odd.  AND it was hard to read at a few times, I wish Tess had told her own story, it made me feel less connected to Tess.

After reading this book, I lost some value in reading the novella.  The childhood tragedy that happens in the novella is mostly recounted in the book, there are some details missing, but nothing that I really thought gave value for the novella to stand alone.

I am not sure about this one, since the narration put me off so much it was hard to completely connect with the story and Tess and I think that is why I felt that this book moved at an extremely slow pace at times.


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from BookSparks PR.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.