The Day I Lost You by Fionnuala Kearney

THE DAY I LOST YOU WAS THE DAY I DISCOVERED I NEVER REALLY KNEW YOU

When Jess’s daughter, Anna, is reported lost in an avalanche, everything changes. Jess’s first instinct is to protect Rose, Anna’s five-year-old daughter. But then she starts to uncover Anna’s other life - unearthing a secret that alters their whole world irrevocably . . .

THE DAY I LOST YOU WAS THE DAY YOU TORE OUR FAMILY APART.

The Day I Lost You by Fionnuala Kearney follows the story of Jess who has received the worse news any mother can, her daughter Anna has been reported missing after an avalanche. As Jess is trying to cling on to the hope that her daughter is found she is desperately trying to cling onto her granddaughter Rose and attempting to keep life as stable as possible for her. As days past Jess begins to uncover things about her daughter’s life she had no idea about, did she really know her daughter at all?

This book took a few chapters before I could settle into the storyline but before long I was familiar with characters and could feel the emotions and struggles that Jess was enduring through the pages. The storyline is a very emotive one as the characters deal with the uncertainty of what happened to Anna and Jess is comforted by her rock, her sister Leah who was such a strong and thoughtful character. Theo was one of my favourite characters and a close friend to Jess, he  is facing his own troubles but is still there for Jess in her time of need but it was great to have his storyline weaved so well around the Anna situation.

The book is told from both Jess and Theo’s points of view which allows us to get to know them both on a deeper level but what I also loved was the way we got to know Anna through her blog entries as it allowed us to develop our own picture of her rather than just seeing her through other people’s eyes.

For me this book was like a game of pass the parcel as we begin to unwrap each layer we find yet another part of the secret revealed until we eventually have all the pieces of the puzzle and I was in complete shock! I actually thought until just over half the way through this book that it was rather predictable and my attention was beginning to waver but then there was the unveiling that proved me completely wrong!

Fionnuala Kearney has delivered a heart wrenching read with well-rounded characters that we all hope for a happy ending for them. I actually preferred this book to the author’s debut, I found the storyline flowed perfectly and was very well thought out so this book gets the thumbs up from me.

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