Morning All,

Hope everyone is keeping sane and safe through all of the madness that is continuing in our world. I still can’t get my head around what we’re living in at the moment. I’m currently in local lockdown, which means I am not permitted to leave my local borough or go inside of anyone else home. The second one I can cope with quite easily, but the first one I am really struggling with. My family live 100 miles away in England (I’m in Wales), so I am missing them terribly at the moment. The upside is that everyone is safe and keeping well. Hopefully we will start to see improvements soon and at least start to get a view of what “post pandemic life” will look like.

Book 📖

When The Michael Joseph Marketing Team reached out to offer me the chance to read Because of You I jumped at the chance for a copy. Thank you to @MichaelJBooks and @Dawn_French for this advanced copy in return for an honest review. Because of You is due to be published on 15th October 2020 and you can get a copy here.

Description 🔖

As the millennium rolls in, two couples are on a maternity word. Both women come from different backgrounds, but both give birth to very similar daughters. Hope leaves the hospital with the new love of her life; a beautiful baby girl. Anna unfortunately leaves the hospital with no baby and whole lot of heartache.

Seventeen years later, lies from the past start to unravel and the horrible truth is unmasked to all resulting in two broken hearted mothers.

General Thoughts 🤔

What a story this book tells. It’s one of those things that I am certain people would think “this could never happen to me” or “I would never do that” but when reading this book, I defy anyone to not have a moment of putting themselves into either Hope or Anna’s shoes and be able to sympathise with both mothers.

Having lived and breathed the lives of the characters whilst reading this book, I really should have known how the story was going to conclude, but it still snuck up on me and I had to hold back tears. Tears for so many reasons too. I felt so very sad, but also happy and relieved. LOTS of emotions poured out of me throughout this read.

Characters 👫👭👬

I’d like to give quite a short summary of each of the characters that really struck a chord with me.

Hope – I understood Hope. I may not have agreed with her 100% of the time, but I felt a lot of empathy toward her that allowed me to forgive her.

Anna – I felt such sadness for Anna. Not only for losing her beautiful daughter but for the lack of support and love after the fact. She proved herself as one of the strongest characters in my opinion.

Issac – what a difficult position this man was put in. Similar to Hope I did not agree with his actions and I felt like he should have taken charge of a terrible situation, but I admired his commitment to and love for Hope.

Julias – what an absolute moron. There is no love lost between this character and I.

Minnie – if I had a daughter, I would want her to be like Minnie. Strong willed, independent, smart, creative and loyal to the end.

Writing Style ✍️

I’ve not read a Dawn French book before and this hopefully won’t be my last. This is her first book in five years and I’d guess that a lot of that time has been poured into this book.

The book is told from the point of view of all characters in the story which I felt was a fantastic way of keeping me on my toes and keeping me invested in the stories and the characters. She also did a brilliant job of bringing such a range of emotions out of me; the reader and tying it all off with such a bittersweet ending.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖️

As I said I was really excited to have the opportunity to read this book; mostly because I’ve never read Dawn French’s work before but secondly because if it’s the first book she’s released in so long, you can almost guarantee it’s going to be good. I was not at all disappointed and would definitely recommend this book to anyone who’d like to have a read and good cry!!

😍😍😍😍😫