Book ~ "The Midwife's Confession" (2011) Diane Chamberlain

From Goodreads ~ Dear Anna, 

What I have to tell you is difficult to write, but I know it will be far more difficult for you to hear, and I'm so sorry -

The unfinished letter is the only clue Tara and Emerson have to the reason behind their close friend Noelle's suicide. Everything they knew about Noelle - her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her friends and family - described a woman who embraced life.

Yet there was so much they didn't know.

With the discovery of the letter and its heartbreaking secret, Noelle's friends begin to uncover the truth about this complex woman who touched each of their lives - and the life of a desperate stranger - with love and betrayal, compassion and deceit.

Tara, Emerson and Noelle have been best friends since university when Tara and Emerson were dorm roommates and Noelle was their R.A.  Twenty years later, they are still friends ... Tara is a recent widow with a teenage daughter named Grace, Emerson is married with a teenage daughter named Jenny (Grace and Jenny are best friends) and Noelle is a midwife.

Tara and Emerson are shocked when they discover that Noelle has committed suicide.  As Emerson is packing up Noelle's stuff, she looks for clues as to why their friend had killed herself.  She finds the beginning of a letter to "Anna", apologizing for something horrible she had done and Tara and Emerson discover so much about their friend they didn't know.

This is the fourth book I've read by this author and I enjoyed it.  It was an interesting story with lots of twists.

I liked the writing style.  It is written in first person perspective from Tara, Emerson, Grace and Anna's perspective and third person perspective when the focus was on Noelle.  The book jumps back and forth in time but the chapters are labelled so you know whose perspective it is and the time period, which worked for me.  As a head's up, there is a bit of swearing.

I liked most of the characters.  Tara was dealing with the recent death of her husband in a car accident and raising Grace while trying to move on with her life.  Emerson just opened a coffee shop.  I didn't like Grace, Tara's daughter.  Yes, she had a lot going on with the death of her father and her boyfriend breaking up with her but she was so rude and ignorant to her mother ... I think it went beyond just being a teenager.  Tara was trying to connect with Grace and I found their interactions and conversations with Grace awkward and unnatural.  And I wasn't a fan of Tara's husband, Sam, who appears in flashbacks ... he and Tara had a good marriage and he and Grace were very close but he left me cold.