Kelly Rimmer

I need a moment after finishing this book to pick my heart up off the floor along with the Kleenex. I loved this book!

Two sisters, Annie and Lexie. They are raised in a normal happy household with a loving mother and father. Until the worst happens. Their father died and their mother became a shell of the person she used to be, totally wrapped up in her grief. Lexie became the mother figure to Annie and the two sisters became as close as two sisters could.
When their mother, Deborah, comes show more out the fog, meets and marries Robert, it should have been a happy ending. But Robert, part of a religious sect, took them to live on the commune and life as they knew it ended. Rules upon rules became their life.

Two sisters; Annie, spirited and defiant, Lexie while unhappy and in disagreement followed the rules until her 16th birthday and then walked away and didn’t look back. Annie didn’t fare as well but escaped at 14 and the two sisters were together again.
Two sisters came from the commune. One became educated as a doctor and was in a long term relationship. The other became a train wreck who destroyed everything she touched and to whom drugs became her new best friend.

One night, after two years of no contact, Annie called Lexie in the middle of the night; scared, in pain and pregnant and Lexie is once again drawn into the chaotic life of her sister. But there’s a difference now, Annie wants to get clean for the sake of her baby.

Two sisters and one baby. Both want the best for the baby but that comes at a price for both. While Annie struggled in court mandated rehab, Lexie struggled to be a temporary mom to a drug addicted baby.

This book was raw and honest and emotional. I found it to be very accurate in the portrayal of a drug addict and didn’t sugar coat the struggle of both Annie and her sister who loved her. It’s a heartbreaking tale that you can’t stop reading.

This was the first book of Kelly Rimmer that I have read, I have already downloaded others of hers. Five stars for me. show less

Before I Let You Go by Kelly Rimmer is a heartbreaking yet thought-provoking novel that sensitively and realistically portrays addiction.

As children, Lexie Vidler promised her father she would always take care of her younger sister, Annie. For the past six years, this promise has been increasingly difficult to keep as Annie's drug addiction worsens. Two years ago, Lexie finally cut off all ties with Annie but when her sister makes a frantic 2 AM phone call, she cannot refuse to help. Because show more this time, Annie is pregnant and her unborn baby is in jeopardy. So with her fiancé, Sam Hawke, at her side, Lexie is drawn back into the chaos that always surrounds Annie.

Neither Lexie nor Annie are particularly likable characters (which is painful to admit since the storyline is so captivating). Lexie is a successful doctor but her relationship with Annie is so incredibly dysfunctional. Lexie is determined to take care of her sister's latest mess on her own despite the fact that Sam is willing to help and should be included in making decisions since what is occurring directly affects him as well. Lexie's stubborn refusal to let him help becomes tiresome as does her conviction that cleaning up her sister's messes is HER responsibility not Annie's.

It is always frustrating when an adult refuses to see that a childhood request to take care of a sibling is not a lifelong sentence or commitment. This is especially true since Annie's addiction is NOT Lexie's responsibility and she has become the worst enabler as she makes excuses for her sister and refuses to hold Annie accountable for her actions. Lexie has put herself into incredible debt as she continues to pay for rehab and while it is understandable that she desperately wants to help Annie kick her addiction, she refuses to acknowledge that ANNIE has to decide she wants to get sober. Without this commitment and a dedicated effort to understand why she turns to drugs to cope, Annie will never maintain her sobriety. Annie's journal entries provide incredible insight into her past and how her inability to deal with her horrific ordeal set her on the path to addiction.

Before I Let You Go is a deeply affecting novel with a topical storyline about opioid addiction. Kelly Rimmer never downplays the effects of addiction on the addict's family and she accurately portrays the heartrending withdrawal that is experienced by a baby born to a drug addicted mother. This insightful glimpse of drug addiction and its effects on the addict's loved ones is an engrossing novel that is emotional, heart wrenching and ultimately, healing. show less

I'm not sure how old I was when I read Leon Uris's book about the Warsaw ghetto, Mila 18. I'm pretty sure I was in high school which would make it over 55 years ago. Yet it has stuck with me all these years. So, when I was browsing for an audiobook to listen to, I was immediately attracted to this title. I don't think this book has the dramatic impact that Mila 18 but for the younger generations who have maybe not heard about the Warsaw ghetto uprising, it should perform the same function show more that Mila 18 did for me.

Amelia is a 13 year old Catholic girl whose father and brother were both killed by the Nazis. She was taken in by childless neighbours who then had to flee the Germans and go to Warsaw. There, Amelia was given a false identity in case the Germans were still searching for her. Now called Elzbieta, she finds a purpose to her life when she befriends Sara, her next-door neighbour who as a nurse enters the Warsaw ghetto daily. Sara and another nurse are helping to smuggle children out of the ghetto. Soon, unknown by her parents, Elzbieta/Amelia accompanies Sara into the ghetto where she prepares children to live outside the ghetto by teaching them Polish and Catholic prayers. On a family visit that Sara and Elzbieta make they encounter Roman. Roman was raised in the Catholic faith although his mother is Jewish because his father, a Catholic, wanted his son to be Christian. His father died and his mother remarried a Jewish man which is why they ended up in the ghetto. Roman has a step-brother and a newly born step-sister. The step-sister is poorly because of the starvation forced on the family. Sara wants to smuggle her and the young brother out but Roman violently opposes this. Later, once the transportations start, Roman realizes this is the best way to save his siblings and apologizes to Elzbieta. The baby is smuggled out in the false bottom of Sara's nursing bag but before the brother can be gotten out the rest of the family are transported to Treblinka, except Roman who was not home at the time. Roman throws his lot in with the uprising during which the Germans raze the ghetto's buildings. Badly hurt, Roman makes his way to Elzbieta's apartment which she had described for him during their conversations. When he is finally healed, Roman joins the Polish resistance.During his convalescence, Elzbieta visited him regularly and the two fell in love. Elzbieta and her mother and father flee Warsaw during the uprising but then they are in the Russian Red Army territory which is almost as bad, and in some ways worse, than the Germans. Elzbieta is gang raped by three Russians and becomes pregnant. With Warsaw liberated, they return to their old apartment and they manage to find Sara. Roman was captured by the Germans and sent to a POW camp. Eventually, he returns to Warsaw and finds Elzbieta's parents only to learn about the pregnancy which Elzbieta is spending in a convent outside of the city. Elzbieta has decided that her foster parents should adopt her baby. She has also faced the fact that Roman will always be fighting to return Poland to the Polish people and that she can never have the secure life she desires. Of course, that's not the final word in the Roman and Amelia romance but I won't spoil the ending.

The author has said that this book was inspired by Irena Sendler, head of a team that saved 2500 children by smuggling them out of the ghetto. Sendler was arrested for her activities in 1943 but managed to escape on the day she was scheduled to be executed. Sendler died in 2008 at the age of 98. show less

This book was fantastic! Told in dual timelines, we see the four children in the Walsh family coming together as their father needs to be moved into a memory care facility. The relationships between the four adult children were fantastic, at times warm, at others troubled, and wonderfully real. Beth, the youngest, has recently had her first child, and is struggling, though she doesn’t initially recognize why. She agrees to take on the ask of cleaning out their father’s house and finds show more clues to what may have happened to their mother decades before—and it may not have been what they were always told.

In the second timeline, we hear from Grace and her sister. Sometimes I struggle with flashbacks in novels, particularly when they take up a huge chunk of the narrative, but this one was FANTASTIC and gave a detailed, bleak look at what life was like for women back in a time where they had little agency. When Grace finds herself with four children under the age of four, an alcoholic husband, no money, and crushing postpartum depression, she receives no support. Doctors tell her to buck up. Her family does nothing to help because they do not approve of the marriage. She finds herself pregnant for a fifth time and facing the prospect of a fifth child under the age of five, coniders the terrible option of getting an illegal abortion by an unlicensed person claiming to be a doctor.

What struck me so hard was how the women in this story suffered so much. They had few resources, no way out. The author did a wonderful job of presenting the bleakness of their situation. All of the Walsh children revered their father and considered him a wonderful man and had only perfect memories of how he’d raised them. They were too young to remember the terrible neglect of their early years described in the flashbacks. It was just incredibly well written and devastating and made me grateful that the story in present day could turn out differently.

Trigger Warnings: child neglect, postpartum depression, alcoholism, dementia

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. show less