How do you explain those unexpected moments of love?
When Kendra Tamale returns to England from Australia she rents a room from Kyle, a separated father of two, and begins a new job. She's looking forwards to a fresh start and a simple life.
Kyle's six-year-old twins, Summer and Jaxon, have other ideas and quickly adopt Kendra as their new mother - mainly because she lets them eat marshmallows for breakfast. Kendra eventually becomes a part of their lives, even though she's hiding a painful secret that makes her keep everyone - especially children - at arm's length.
Then Kendra bumps into the man who shares her awful secret, and everything falls apart: she can't sleep, she can't eat, she's suspended from work, and the kids are taken away by their mother. The only way to fix things is to confess to the terrible mistake she made all those years ago. But that's something she swore never to do...
The first thing I am going to say about this book is that it was nothing like I had expected it to be. I had expected the obvious chick lit with the obvious ending but it wasn't. It was more 'girly' than the recent books which I have read, I wanted that, but it didn't have the amazing love story like most chick lits do, of which I'm glad as they are near enough all exactly the same. The only thing I was actually expecting to happen in this book, never happened.
The book starts off with a prologue which I thought was the reason to why she left Australia. But then I read on, and she reveals why she did leave Oz, which has nothing to do with the prologue. This actually confused the hell out of me and it wasn't until the 3rd to last chapter where I figured out the prologue...
I actually really enjoyed this book. Okay so it took me a few days to get into it, but I've spent the past two days reading it (mainly as the weather has been AWFUL and I've had nothing else to do...) but if I didn't enjoy it then I wouldn't have read it. The problem is I haven't actually got much to say about it unlike the Jodi Picoult books. I can't compare this book to other books by Dorothy Koomson as I haven't read any others by her. But I will be in the future as I did enjoy this book.
The book is told mainly from the POV of Kendra but it also includes flashbacks from both her life, and from Kyle's and also his 'wife' Ashlyn's. One thing which I don't actually understand about the book is that even though it is chaptered, it has almost like different sections. Like after 5 or so chapters, there is a new 'section' which has a new 'title' almost, which is a different type of breakfast food (or something obscure which you might eat for breakfast in most instances) but I don't truly get it.
I just had a quick look at the reviews of this book on Amazon and Play.com and they don't seem that good. I don't get it though, I really enjoyed it. Okay so it did take a few chapters to get into it, and okay so the ending did 'fizzle out' as someone said, but I did LOVE the ending and the choice which she chose. Another person said that they guessed the main part of the story before being told about it in the book, I had too...but I don't think that was, is, overall the main part to the novel. It is (you'll see if you read it) the actual main part as that's why Kendra is like how she is...buuuut I think the main part is more to do with the kids and the ending of the book...yeah this is a bit of a lame book review but it's half 9 at night, I'm tired and ill, and I'm finding it hard to review this book :')
The way the book is written, the way the children are portrayed, does make you fall in love with them. I think this is the thing which made me carry on reading from the beginning, I wanted to know what happened to the children. Chick lits don't usually concentrate on the children and such, that's why I wouldn't class this as a full blown chick lit.
Oh I didn't get 'excited' by this book, there were no twists and major surprises which did put a bit of a downer on it though...apart from the ending was a little surprise seeing as I didn't think that was how it would end.
I'm going to wrap this up now, a great book but it might take a while to get into. I can't compare to other books by Dorothy Koomson as I haven't read them, but I would give it a try.
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