Published By: Boldwood
Pages: 305
Released On: 06/04/2024
When Shelley Woodhouse wakes up in hospital from a coma, the first thing she says is that her husband must be arrested.
He’s the reason she’s in here. She knows it. She remembers what he did. Clearly as anything.
But there are things Shelley has forgotten too, including parts of her childhood. And as those start to come back to her, so do other memories. Ones with the power to change everything.
But can she trust these new memories, or what anyone around her is telling her? And who is the mysterious hospital volunteer who brings her food and keeps making her smile? Is it possible to find your future when you’re confused about your past?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
*Contains Potential Spoilers*
I only came to Laura Pearson last year, with The Last List of Mabel Beaumont, and she instantly felt like someone I wanted to be friends with, and so I was really keen to read this latest offering.
It’s set in the present time, but every other chapter is set in Shelley’s past: her childhood, her adolescence, her family life, her marriage – so it helps build this picture of what she’s like and what has got her to this point, without relying on clumsy memories.
It does contain some difficult topics such as domestic violence, fractured relationships, abandonment, and loneliness, and critical illness. It’s not an easy read. I mean, it is in the sense that I read it in a day, as it’s so seamlessly and excellently written, but the topics mentioned are difficult, but important. They’re not used gratuitously or over-the-top, they’re very real and unfortunately something that many readers can relate to.
I really liked Shelley, both in the present scenes and the flashbacks. We learn things about her as it goes along, sometimes learning things at the same time as her. There are of course other characters, friends, partners, relatives, nurses etc. and they’re all great in themselves, but Shelley stole the whole book for me, the others there just to lift her up. She shines and you really root for her on every page.
I mean, luckily I don’t know what it’s like to be in a coma, but Laura has depicted that uncertainty, the fear, this sense of bewilderment and confusion and discombobulating (I’ve always wanted to get that word into a review) that one must feel when waking up from a short or long spell. It must be very confusing and scary, and it sounds very real and very moving in this book.
It ticks along very nicely, it’s very enjoyable, watching Shelley through his recovery. And then at about halfway through there’s a bombshell – which I won’t spoil, obviously – that it completed turned what I thought, and what Shelley thought, on its head.
It is very emotive, very moving. For sad reasons, happy reasons, and angry reasons. Laura has pitched it just right. It’s uplifting without being too sweet, sad without being morbid, frightening without being too scary. It shows humanity at its best and its worse.
This is my second book of hers and I now aim to read them all.
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