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A Little Hope by Ethan Joella

Contemporary fiction

A Little Hope

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Ethan Joella, on your first book!

by Ethan Joella

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Quick take

An ode to the beauty of the everyday, this novel traces the losses, loves, and dreams of a small Connecticut town.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Sad

    Sad

Synopsis

In the small city of Wharton, Connecticut, lives are beginning to unravel. A husband betrays his wife. A son struggles with addiction. A widow misses her late spouse. At the heart of these interlinking stories is one couple: Freddie and Greg Tyler.

Greg has just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a brutal form of cancer. He intends to handle this the way he has faced everything else: through grit and determination. But can Greg successfully overcome his illness? How will Freddie and their daughter cope if he doesn’t? How do the other residents of Wharton learn to live with loss, and find happiness again?

An emotionally powerful debut that immerses the reader into a community of friends, family, and neighbors, A Little Hope celebrates the importance of small moments of connection and the ways that love and forgiveness can help us survive even the most difficult of life’s challenges.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of A Little Hope.

A Little Hope

1.

Rain Day

Freddie Tyler wakes at six and watches her sleeping husband breathe for a moment. The dog lifts his head from his place at the foot of the bed and jumps off to join her before she slips out the door. Downstairs, she flips the switch by the fireplace and flames spread out among the river rocks.

The coffee sputters and drips as she opens the back door for the dog, Wizard. Freddie relishes the rush of autumn air against her ankles, watches the dog trudge through the dewy grass, goes back in to feed the cat, which has been waiting in the kitchen.

She shouldn’t be worried.

Freddie has always loved mornings. She likes the margin she gains when she’s the first awake. She likes the way the back lawn outside the window looks rested and raked. She likes the way half the kitchen is dark. The sun through the skylight makes lazy shadows of trees across the wood floors, and she wanders around the house as if she has just discovered it.

Beyond the yard’s back fence are two wooded lots, and she wishes she and Greg could buy them so no one ever builds there. The trees are starting to turn, just blushing now with hints of red, and she pictures a deer somewhere tiptoeing its way around. She imagines knowing those lots would always stay the same, knowing they could make that happen. But this isn’t a good time to talk about the future.

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Why I love it

In A Little Hope, a heartfelt, life-affirming novel, we follow the many stories of the inhabitants of a small Connecticut town. Each chapter is devoted to someone new—a woman whose husband has just been diagnosed with cancer, her husband’s high-powered boss and his illegitimate child, a local business owner with ties to everyone in the community, and more. If this all sounds dizzying, it is all the more testament to the excellent writing that seamlessly blends these stories together.

At the heart of it, this is a novel about the resiliency of love and the human spirit. We love each other, love who is left, love who we can, and do the best we can do, however that may be possible. This does not mean that we aren't changed, of course, and we see into the minds of those who have lost and see the scars that are left and how they persevere. Especially after the bruising last eighteen months, which, I suspect, have left us all looking for connection and meaning, this felt especially relatable.

What I love about this book is its emotional truths—at times deeply sad, the novel is simultaneously soothing as it speaks honestly of the everyday celebrations and tragedies of each character’s life. The author captures so well what it is like to be young, to get married for the first time, to lose your first love, and to find your head spinning at having lost the freedom and carelessness of your 20s. It is a beautiful novel, and as the title suggests, its moving characters and beautiful writing might just give you a little hope.

Other books by Ethan Joella

Member ratings (18,432)

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Contemporary fiction
View all
The Last Love Note
What Does It Feel Like?
Anita de Monte Laughs Last
The Wedding People
Honey
The Leftover Woman
The Same Bright Stars
Bye, Baby
Swan Song
The Days I Loved You Most
The Connellys of County Down
Joe Nuthin’s Guide to Life
Jackpot Summer
Adelaide
The Collected Regrets of Clover
Again and Again
Evil Eye
Black Cake
Maame
Romantic Comedy
Someone Else’s Shoes
Once There Were Wolves
We Are the Brennans
The Bad Muslim Discount
What Comes After
Olga Dies Dreaming
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel
Monster in the Middle
Nine Perfect Strangers
The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
The Girl with Stars in Her Eyes
Honey Girl
In Every Mirror She's Black
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Sankofa
The Unsinkable Greta James
The Love of My Life
The Five-Star Weekend
The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
The Wishing Game
Behold the Dreamers
The Mothers
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things
Little Fires Everywhere
The Music Shop
Where’d You Go, Bernadette
The Reckless Oath We Made
When We Were Vikings
The Girl with the Louding Voice
A Good Neighborhood
Big Summer
All Adults Here
Happy & You Know It
Friends and Strangers
The Comeback
True Story
The Last Story of Mina Lee
Troubles in Paradise
White Ivy
This Close to Okay
The Chicken Sisters
The Prophets
In a Book Club Far Away
The Other Black Girl
Apples Never Fall
A Quiet Life
We Are the Light
The Most Likely Club
The Fortunes of Jaded Women
When We Were Bright and Beautiful
The Hotel Nantucket