Title: The Life She Left Behind
Author: Nicole Trope
Genre: Literary Fiction | Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Bookouture (1 July 2020)
Buy Links: Amazon | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play
Blurb
When I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s not a sound that disturbs me. It’s a feeling. Silently, I creep to my daughter’s room, breathing a sigh of relief when I see her sleeping, her night-light twirling, butterfly shapes moving their pink wings. Quickly, I lock the door. I won’t let anything happen to my little girl.
You tell him everything. The husband you adore, the father of your child, your best friend.
He knows, just by looking at your sage-green eyes, when something is wrong. The two of you can communicate with a glance, or a touch of the hand.
Except what if you can’t?
What if your happy marriage has plastered over one huge lie? A lie you have even started to believe yourself, in order to survive?
What if you have a secret, something you have hidden from your beloved husband and your strawberry-scented baby girl, to keep them safe? What if the guilt has kept you up, night after night, for as long as you can remember?
What happens when suddenly, after twenty-eight years, that secret refuses to stay buried? What will you do now everyone you love, everything you cherish, is in harm’s way?
An emotional, thought-provoking and beautifully written novel which examines the pieces of ourselves we are afraid of, and the impossible decisions we make when we are desperate. Fans of Jodi Picoult, Kerry Fisher and Liane Moriarty will be moved by this heartbreaking tale.
Review
Rachel and her mother fled an abusive husband and father when Rachel had just turned seven, sadly they could not wait and left her thirteen year old brother behind. The pact between the mother and child was that it was a secret and they would never tell.
Twenty eight years later troll dolls from Rachel’s childhood keep turning up not just in her new home but in her husband’s car and where her daughter can find them too, she is undoubtedly scared thinking her father had finally found her and worried at what he will do now. She cannot confide in her mother as she is in a hospice now with not much time and drifting in and out of consciousness due to the pain killers, she doesn’t want her last thoughts to be of worry either. She will have to deal with it herself.
This was an emotional read and is very real for some people. Told in a few different points of view past and present we see how it affected not only Rachel’s life as a small child watching and hearing her father abusing her mother and her life now but more importantly the damage done to the brother they left behind, his mental state and how it was for him after they left him.
Nicole Trope wrote a fantastic book and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.
Author Bio
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because, as her professor pointed out, ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’
She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree. In between raising three children, working for her husband and renovating houses, she has published six novels. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
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Disclaimer: I received a copy of this ebook from Netgalley, thank you to Bookouture for allowing me to review this book and be a part of the book tour.
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