Many thanks to Noelle Holten and publisher Bookouture for my spot on this Blog Tour

The book was quite different. It had all what the blurb promised and beyond that too. My first book by Ali Mercer, I went in thinking it was a thriller, but it wasn’t. It was about how a moment of lost control could lead to repercussions.

Rachel was a good mother, she worked hard, looked after the needs of her husband and her daughter Becca and was always working. Her husband was a house husband, but to me, he was quite a slimy character with a holier-than-thou attitude. Oh how I hate such people!

Then Rachel’s mother died and she went into depression, and one rash act caused her to lose custody of her daughter. She moved away according to her daughter’s wishes, leaving her home to her husband and started living in a shabby place.

Rachel met with women like her, Viv and Leona, who had lost their children due to circumstances, and the book was more about Rachel finding her strength and in the process, getting to know the human psyche.

Ali’s writing had the power to pull me in thoroughly at some places, there was innocence and honesty. The emotions shown by all the characters were controlled. I kept thinking how glorious it would have been if they had let go and said what needed to be said. Then the book would have been at a whole new level.

Overall, the lives of the three women were weaved well, enmeshed into the bonds of the story. This book was not only about lost daughters but also about relationships, old ones and the new. It was about human nature with its strengths and flaws. A good read.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and publisher Bookouture, and this is my journey into its pages, straight from the heart!!

All my reviews can be found here

Ali decided she wanted to be a writer early on and wrote her first novel when she was at primary school. She did an English degree and spent her early twenties working in various jobs in journalism, including as a reporter for the showbusiness newspaper The Stage. She started writing fiction in earnest after getting married, moving out of London to the Oxfordshire market town of Abingdon and starting a family. She has two children, a daughter and a son who is autistic and was diagnosed when he was four years old.
Ali is fascinated by families, their myths and secrets, and the forces that hold them together, split them up and (sometimes) bring them back together again. She always travels with tissues and a book and has been known to cry over a good story, but is also a big fan of the hopeful ending.

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Your life isn’t perfect, but you’re still happy. Your husband has stuck by you and he’s a good dad. Your daughter Becca makes your heart explode with love. And then, in the time it takes to say ‘bad mother’, there’s no longer a place for you in your own family. Your right to see your child has disappeared.

Life goes on in your house – family dinners, missing socks and evening baths – but you aren’t there anymore. Becca may be tucked up in bed in Rose Cottage, but she is as lost to you as if she had been snatched from under your nose.

Everyone knows you deserve this, for what you did. Except you’re starting to realise that things maybe aren’t how you thought they were, and your husband isn’t who you thought he was either. That the truths you’ve been so diligently punishing yourself for are built on sand, and the daughter you have lost has been unfairly taken from you. Wouldn’t that be more than any mother could bear?

Publication Date: 14th May 2019

Publisher: Bookouture

Amazon

https://geni.us/B07NPX3XYMSocial

Apple Books

https://apple.co/2UZwwmU

Kobo

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Googleplay

http://ow.ly/MG3V30nI3hJ