My Review.....

We have a few main characters and their cast, most of them get a fair amount of book, so you have to assume they all play a part in this book.....
We have Emma and her ex Will and his new family (Emma has more of a major role and is mum to Lauren)
We have Lauren who is a music student, she has a large circle of friends, pretty and well liked, her grades are good, and Mum never has any problems with her daughter.
We have Sylvie and Graham, married to one another, but Sylvie has a problem, she’s an alcoholic, her family are at their wits end, and after she smashes up a love rival for her husband (it’s not like that, she’s Graham’s work colleague) car, Graham knows that it’s time to call it a day, his boys don’t need to be dragged into this mess on an almost daily basis (granted they are in their twenties) but who needs to see their mother like that? But Sylvie keeps telling everyone that Graham has a secret, and unless she’s allowed home, she’s going to tell the world.
He have Oliver (Graham’s second son) and he is also bright and popular having a large circle of mates. Oliver has always been closer to mother than dad, but he knows his dad loves him (but mum has slowly been poisoning her son, she tells Oliver, that Charlie is and will always be his favourite child!!) and Oliver doesn’t want his dad to help him get a job (Graham is a producer) he wants to gain respect through his own merit, not off his dad’s name.
And Oliver’s brother Charlie (he’s studying to be a lawyer.) pretty patient with both his parents. Charlie and Oliver have a great sibling relationship.
We then have a cast of friends and others, these are all slowly introduced and also have their own little stories (i don’t think it detracts from the main storyline)

The book then begins to weave the story, Emma is trying to find work, getting an interview, and maybe a new job. She’s also worrying about her debt (and lack of money) it’s her own fault really, she blames the fact she was pretty naive about the business world, and now after losing her little business and her home (to pay off the debtors) Emma has to start over again. Oh ... and is she reading too much into the cryptic clues her daughters English teacher keeps sending her? Does he like her? Will she have the nerve to chase him? The reason Emma is in debt.... her husband convinced her to let him manage her company, then fell in love with someone else, but that’s not all.... he didn’t really know what he was doing, and so bankrupted Emma’s little business, but he’s not worried, his new girlfriend (and eventually wife) is from money, but it doesn’t stop them from bleeding Emma dry!!!

The story then goes about putting these two young people together, not in the usual way, but in a way that will change these two families forever!!!

Oliver NEVER drinks and drives, he’s watched his mum for years battle with alcoholism, he’s seen what it can do, yes he gets drunk, but never gets behind a wheel. But all that changes in a split second .... His mum rings him and tells him goodbye, that it would be better if she wants here!!! In a panic Oliver believes she’s going to commit suicide!!! Racing to his car, his only thought is of his mum, and trying to get to her before anything happens, but something happens and it’s not what Oliver expects .......

Lauren is in the middle of nowhere!!! Having lied to her mum about where she is going, and who she’s going to be with, she’s now stuck with a broken down car!!! No signal from her phone, Lauren decides to walk and try to find help.

Thump!!!! Oh god no!!! Please don’t let it be anything major.... that’s Oliver’s first thought, getting out of the car, it’s worse than he first thought!!! It’s a girl!!! How the hell did he hit her? Where did she come from? (Yes he was speeding, and he wasn’t thinking clearly) all types of thoughts run through his head (does he run? Does he phone the ambulance? Where did she come from? And why didn’t he see her?)
Finding a weak signal he phones for an ambulance, praying that the girl lives, he waits with her till it arrives ......

We then see how the fight for Lauren’s life affects both the families (Lauren’s parents want their daughter to survive, then anger surfaces and then they want justice fir their daughter) the consequences of a drunken mother’s phone call to her son (prison probably) each set of parents blaming themselves and then each other.

And along the way, Oliver falling for Lauren (finding her on social media and following her life) realising that he has possibly killed the one person he could be with and be himself.

It’s very slow in the beginning.... do we need all that background? I think we do, we need to know where Lauren and Oliver come from. Oliver isn’t a bad lad, he just didn’t think. Lauren isn’t a bad person for lying to her mum, but if she’s been honest, then this probably won’t have happened.

A few surprises along the way (one I didn’t see coming) but well worth persevering with it.

🦋 ( )

This book tells the story of two families who would never have met if not for the most terrible of circumstances. Lauren is young, pretty and vivacious and lives with her mother while studying for her A levels. Oliver is also young and trying to find his place in life while coping with his alcoholic mother.

What an amazing book which really tells the story well and has great characterisation of all the main characters. The first few chapters were rather slow but were needed to set the scene of these two young people before their lives collide and change for-ever.

It's hard to say much without giving the story away but I would definately encourage you to read this book which reads almost as if a real account.

The anguish of Emma is so vividly described I just wanted to reach out and hold her in her pain as she struggles with what has happened and as she discovers the truth about her daughter it is so raw that at times it is hard to read.

Lauren's father Will couldn't be more different to his ex-wife and virtually abandons his family and balmes everyone for what has happenned while refusing to accept the rality of the situation as it stands.

Meanwhile Oliver and his family are barely coping with his actions but don't run away from the consequences other than his mother who takes refuge in the bottle as always.

The sexual language wasn't needed and felt clumsy although I can see why it was included.

It challenges us to think about how we would react in similar circumstances, would we react with hope for the future or despair that things can never be as they were.


( )

It took me forever to get into this.
Precisely, it took me all of 10(ish) chapters to get into it. I was constantly giving up, and picking it up again, and I was just about to give up for the last time when things started happening and then I didn't want to give up on it anymore.

It starts out really slow, and I really mean slow. The blurb doesn't really give an inclination on what it is that happens for the story to finally start getting anywhere, and I just didn't know what to expect and when to expect it so I was kind of jittery throughout and I almost started skimming over everything until something caught my attention, but my guilty conscience got the better of me so I took my time reading it.

So I'll do something now that I rarely do, and I actually hate it when reviewers kind of repeat the blurb. But seeing how vague it is, I'll tell you what happens, because I wish I knew before I started reading and all Google search returned nothing at all about it. No spoilers on how the story actually unfolds or ends, but still, I'll spoiler-tag it.

The story starts out with an introduction of Emma, a divorcee trying to start over after having to close down her catering business, apparently ruined by her husband, and her picture-perfect, eighteen year old daughter, Lauren, a talented musician and full of life, who is about to start her adult life and is loved by everyone.

Then we get to meet Sylvie Lomax, a (pathetic, jealous, self-centered) drunk, her husband, Russ, who is just about to give up on her and their marriage, and their son, Oliver, a twenty-one year old young man, just out of school, who has a promising future ahead of him.

Nothing connects these two families, at least for those first ten-ish chapters, where we are told how much trouble Emma has finding a job and starting over. Lauren is having this huge secret that we find nothing about yet. Oliver is trying to get over feeling like a disappointment to his father compared to Charlie, his brother. Sylvie's alcoholism mixed with jealousy are getting way out of hand, and Russ is having an affair with her friend Fiona.

It all comes together the night Oliver goes to a party, starts drinking, and Lauren is up to something, and lies to her mother about her whereabouts that night. For me, I wouldn't mind if this is the place where the book actually started.
At the same time, Sylvie finds out about Russ's affair, makes a frantic phone call to Oliver making him believe she is about to end her life. Oliver, beside himself, sits in his car even though he's had to drink and sets off for his mother's. Lauren's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, her phone has no reception, she's only a couple of miles away from home, so she gets out and starts to walk home on foot.

This is the moment their lives collide, quite literally, when Oliver hits Lauren with his car in this middle of nowhere, leaving her fighting for her life, and him fighting his guilty conscience and (completely justified) criminal charges...and the real story starts.

The characters were so vivid and colorful and most importantly, believable. The story, once it picks up, is unbelievably engrossing. The writing was so good, I literally couldn't put it down. I have started crying a couple of times during the book, seeing a mother struggle like that, seeing her daughter in a new light, trying to fight the blame her ex-husband puts on her for what happened. A father trying to keep his family together. It was all heartbreaking to read.

I understood what Oliver was going through, as well as his fascination with Lauren. This is really something that could happen today, what with people using Facebook and Youtube to basically catalog their lives. It's easy to get an impression you might actually get to know somebody who puts themselves out there for everyone to see. I get it that he fell...in like with her.
There is a moment when he realizes that he might have taken her from himself, and will probably never get a chance to meet her and be in her life and have her in his. It's actually heartbreaking. He was holding on to this little hope that she will make it through and wake up, and I was amazed that he never lost it. I was genuinely happy for him when she did wake up.

Lauren's little indiscretion with her teacher (the beast, I swear) wasn't exactly unexpected (I was expecting it to be something major seeing how much mystery there was about where she was before the accident), but it did surprise me who it turned out to be. I was certain it was the school headmaster actually.

Emma and Russ are both such strong characters, too. I was so happy to see that things are kind of heading the way they were with the two of them in the end, because they definitely need each other in their lives.

The bit that annoyed me is how they kept focusing on the fact that Oliver could lose his driving license. Who cares about that in the end? It would have been the last of my worries, I think. The bigger issue would be if he had to do jail time, or even worse, if Lauren actually died and Oliver faced even worse charges. I just think that losing his driver's license wouldn't be a huge deal, considering other things.

Let me just say that I don't willingly read books that make me cry. But at times there were tears of joy too, and I can't say I regret reading this. It really was a wonderful read.
So, if you are picking this up, and you find the beginning a bit slow and are about to give up, please continue. It's worth it in the end, I promise.

Also, the cover is gorgeous, but inaccurate. The heroine is supposed to be blonde (honey-golden was the color of her hair, or something like that). It just irked me a bit, but it's not a big deal. ( )