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Release Date: 14th May 2019 / Publisher: Bookouture

If you think photos aren’t important… wait until they’re all you have left of your child.

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?

A heart-wrenchingly emotional drama for fans of Lisa Wingate, Jill Childs and Jodi Picoult.

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My Review

My first book by this author. It follows the lives of 3 women, Rachel, Leona and Viv. They are all very different women, but all have one thing in common in that they are all separated from a child. The story begins with Rachel and you can see that Rachel has done something bad which makes her (then) husband Mitchell decide it’s for the best if they separate and that he has custody of their daughter, Becca. Following on, she meets Leona and Viv through a counselling group for mothers who are separated from their children, and you get to discover that they are have very different reasons as to why they are separated from them.

The story began well and kept me in suspense throughout the book to discover what Rachel did that was so bad to be separated from her daughter. The story is told from different characters perspectives and their stories were built up well so you really get to know them as the book progresses. I love the friends’ relationships with each other and, whilst Rachel appeared initially hesitant, it was lovely to see her have the support and friendship that she so needed.

Whilst it comes across as a story from the thriller genre, for me it was also a book of self-discovery, friendships and relationships. It does have a good amount of suspense running all the way through it, particularly where Rachel’s husband was concerned! The characters were all likeable in their own way, with the exception of Mitchell who I just couldn’t connect with! The story twists and turns and was the kind of book that when you think you had it all worked out, it all changed again!

It made me sad, it made me angry and it also made me happy – it honestly took me through a rollercoaster of emotions!! Would definitely recommend, and I can’t wait for another book by this author!

The Author

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.