MY SYNOPSIS
Imagine This: Five years since your parents died
and you are not in grief mode. Heck, even if you are you do not want to admit
it. Their death has created a giant hole in your life, as well as your heart.
You find yourself not committing to anything in your professional life, or your
social life. You are just staying alive, not so much living.
The only one
person you valued in your life has packed out and left. Mostly because you
drove him out, and partly because you are not exactly the type to communicate
your feelings or even revisit the night of your parents’ death.
Apparently,
secrets buried deep are bound to surface. You find out your mum, who so much
claimed to be in love with your father was cheating on him when she was a
newly-wed. Now this man she had an affair with has something important to tell
you. Of course, you do not want to meet him—what with your own fears and your
inability to believe your mum did the unthinkable.
Except this
man hasn’t anytime left. He’d be dying soon. If he dies, he dies with all his secrets.
You tell yourself you wouldn’t see him. But then you man up and fly to
Switzerland.
Of course,
you have no idea what you are in for. One secret leads to another and another
becoming a whole mess of complications you can never believe an easy-going
person such as your mother would put away these ghosts in her pasts for such a
long time.
But be
careful, there’s someone out there who doesn’t want you to uncover these
secrets. Because doing so would lead to their demise, and they’d rather have
you silenced forever.
Carrie Cassidy’s complicated and
messy life laden with secrets and dark pasts summarized for your delight.
MY REVIEW
GO BUY THIS
BOOK!
First of
all, Zoe Miller carves a complicated storyline that looks simple from reading
the opening hundred pages (or so). A storyline I rolled my eyes at, I must
admit, thinking this might be so predictable, you know what secrets would be
revealed…. Blah blah. But then I forgot Zoe’s excellence, her very rare talent
of making the reader carve out their own storyline and throwing the reader off
course with shocking revelations that make her titles hard to predict anymore.
All I am saying is, this book doesn’t seem as easy as it is on first glance.
And the storyline you might be creating for it, would be so different from what
you find out! A star!
Secondly,
there’s great character development. It was hard to fall in love with the main
character at first, because I found her so dull. At times I’d closed the book
and wonder what was off with Zoe’s lead character this time (as I very much
loved the main characters of her previous title). But when our lead begins to
face her fears, begins finding joy in little things, begins living and learning
to confront all stages of grief, she leaps off the page and become lovable—one
every person who’s gone through the loss of someone they loved (five years
earlier!) can relate to! A star.── ★★
Other
characters make this book great too. There’s Mark, the adorable guy our lead
has hurt so much you could feel his anger simmering over the pages with any
argument they have. There’s Sylvie, our lead’s mum who for most of the story we
think she’s someone else till she surprises us and leaves us shocked. There’s
Beth, the timid Beth whose inactions you would find yourself enraged by, but
she inadvertently becomes the smartest and bravest character in the book.
There’s Adam, the bad guy who’d do anything to make sure Carrie doesn’t
discover past secrets. A star to these characters.
Zoe Miller
offers a beautiful portrayal of Ireland in the eighties and Ireland now you
cannot help but adore the past and present narratives of this book. Heck, for
most part I adored the past when our lead wasn’t delivering in the opening
pages.── ★★★
This book is
laced with romance and some very good love-making that is so sensual (and not
the tacky kind you’d find yourself skipping). The mystery would get you so
confused you’d find yourself wondering why you ever tried predicting its
outcome anyway. And the suspense… marvellous!── ★★★★
These are
one of the many reasons I love Zoe Miller: she shows chick-lit/women’s fiction
can embrace other genres without totally altering their chick-lit/women’s
fiction sense. Beautiful.
My rating: I
am tempted to slash half of the stars I intended for the book because it really
began at a slow pace. But upon further deliberations, I found out its pace was
relevant and significant to our lead character’s development. Her growth wouldn’t
have been significant, if the story wasn’t plotted that way. So five stars!
Zoe Miller’s
amazing and different(—you always want that in a book!) story is up on amazing.
Just go get it!
I recommend
this book to anyone who loves their women’s fiction with a slice of dark.
Anyone who wants something to keep them on their thinking feet trying to
connect dots before the writer reaches her resolution should go get this!
Anyone who loves Zoe Miller should go get this book as she doesn’t disappoint!
