Published By: HarperCollins
Pages: 384
Released On: 10/10/2024
ONE NIGHT
It is a wild night in the middle of December, and GP Enya is crouched over a teenage boy, performing CPR in the rain. She found him on a mountain road near Dublin, the victim of a hit-and-run.
ONE MOMENT
The boy survives, but Enya’s life splinters in two. Trapped in an ill-fated marriage, the night of the storm is her catalyst.
ONE CHANCE TO BE FREE
But even in the remote country town that becomes her sanctuary, Enya is haunted by the night in the rain. Beneath the boughs of an ancient tree that tells a thousand stories, can she find the courage to tell her own?
The only way out is through. But surviving the storm is only the beginning…
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I do love a new Cecelia Ahern book and this one sounded so fabulous.
Her writing in this is exceptional. For me, she’s the epitome of what every writer aspires to be. If you’re in a creative writing lesson and you’re told to create characters, create weather, describe emotions – the perfect thing to come out of it would be the equivalent of her work (that made more sense in my head than it does written down but hopefully you know what I mean). For me, she has perfected every aspect of storytelling.
The opening scene which takes place in torrential rain and thunder is so vivid that I forgot it was a book, and I was expecting my dog to come in from the garden looking like a drowned rat, and it almost startled me that it wasn’t actually raining.
Enya is an interesting character, clearly suffering from grief, and possibly something else. She feels alone even when she’s surrounded by others and she has lost her way amongst her grief and being a GP and a wife and a mother – she’s lost her self. And her husband, Xavier, is a vile man. He was so rude and creepy straight away and I didn’t trust him from then on and I felt Enya deserved so much better than him.
It isn’t always a happy book, there are some difficult topics, such as dysfunctional families, second marriages, regrets, jealously, love, motherhood, shock, loss, mental health, infidelity, mortality, ageing.
There is nothing wrong with her writing – as I explained earlier about how exquisite it is. The characters, whilst not always good people, were complex and rough and not always comfortable to read about. There is this really clear sense of space and time.
But I will say, that it dipped slightly in the middle. The opening was so spectacular and got you straight into it, and the ending was satisfying. The middle is still good, don’t get me wrong, but I felt it dipped somewhat in intensity and I found myself hoping that more of the start would appear, but that’s a minor thing.
There isn’t a whole lot of plot, this is definitely more of a character exploration and I prefer that in a book. It’s not always an uplifting, positive, cheerful character exploration and some are nicer than others, but it is thoroughly well done and is very well achieved.
As someone who has suffered from her fair share of grief and mental health struggles, it can be almost impossible to actually explain, to put into words, how it can make you feel. But I think Cecelia has done it in such a sensitive and realistic way; she’s not hidden from troubles or swept them under the rug, but nor has she hyped them up for explicit entertainment values. It’s there front and centre and you really feel for Enya.
Overall, whilst there was a tiny dip towards the middle, I’d say this is probably my favourite book of hers so far (granted I haven’t read them all). It’s not overly uplifting, and some of it is hard to read emotionally, but Cecelia has written a powerful story about love, loss, grief, and what it feels like to be out of control of your self, your mind, your future. With interesting and well written, but not always pleasant, characters, it’s full of emotion. It is definitely going to be another winner for her.
Books By Your Bedside 