A heart-rending story about the unique bond between a father and his daughter, for fans of JOJO MOYES and JOHN GREEN
HOW DO YOU LEAVE THE PERSON YOU LOVE THE MOST?
Will Curtis’s six-year-old daughter, Ella, knows her father will never leave her. After all, he promised her so when her mother died. And he’s going to do everything he can to keep his word.
What Will doesn’t know is that the promise he made to his little girl might be harder to keep than he imagined. When he’s faced with an impossible decision, Will finds that the most obvious choice might not be the right one.
But the future is full of unexpected surprises. And father and daughter are about to embark on an unforgettable journey together . . .
Thank you to Avon and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
If you had the chance to say goodbye to someone you love, would you actually be able to do it?
I’m very emotional this time of year anyway, and I should have guessed from the above description that I may be in need of several boxes of Kleenex. I wasn’t wrong.
By the time I got to the end of the first chapter, I was a wreck. I could hardly see the words through my tears. ‘Oh Lordy’, I thought. Can I really put myself through reading the rest? Do I really need to torture myself with the idea of dying, and not wanting to leave your child alone?
Of course I did.
This book proves that men are entirely capable of writing about emotional subjects (Andy Jones is another writer whose work I adore). It is beautifully written, with well-drawn characters with their own complexities, from the protagonist Will and his sweet daughter Ella, to Will’s parents.
The concept of grief is handled sensitively, and with much needed humour at times. I could picture Will throwing himself against a wall over and over again in an attempt to pass through it.
It makes the reader think about life beyond death, and what would happen to those left behind should we be able to hang around to watch. The frustrations in not being able to get through to our loved ones, to the helplessness and fear that we are not doing the best thing for them if we do.
It is also a story of the unique bond between father and daughter, as Will has brought Ella up as a single parent after Ella’s mother died some years before. It is both heart-rending and heart-warming as we see how a father can influence his daughter’s life.
Fantastic story. Even for soppy people like me.
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