If you’re looking for a book which dives into relationships and how a tragedy affects different people and to different levels, I’d highly recommend Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson.
The plot:
What if the one thing that kept you together was breaking you apart?
All Linda wants to do is sleep. She won’t look at her husband. She can’t stand her daughter. And she doesn’t want to have this baby. Having this baby means moving on, and she just wants to go back to before. Before their family was torn apart, before the blame was placed.
Alienated by their own guilt and struggling to cope, the Sadler family unravels. They grow up, grow apart, never talking about their terrible secret.
That is until Linda’s daughter finds out she’s pregnant. Before she brings another Sadler into the world, Bea needs to know what happened twenty-five years ago. What did they keep from her? What happened that couldn’t be fixed?
A devastating mistake, a lifetime of consequences. How can you repair something broken if pieces are missing?
Pearson writes about love, loss, grief and guilt with grace rarely seen in this genre
If I haven’t written a review immediately after finishing a book, about 2 hours later, I start finding faults with it and then have to change said review. But not with this book. I wrote down my thoughts immediately after, hadn’t crafted the full review, went back a couple of days later and still 110% agreed with myself that there is nothing I would change in this book.
Each chapter is set by days after the tragedy, which is expertly done to show how long grief actually lasts, and the stages people go through. The chapters themselves are quite short, making you say “just one more” with reoccurring failure – it’s so moreish because you just want to find out what’s going on, and also deeply care about the character’s welfare.
There were sooooooo many times I just wanted to climb into this little fictional world and give the character’s a big cuddle or shake some sense into them; I got very angry at one point.
Pearson writes about love, loss, grief and guilt with grace rarely seen in this genre. The writing is spectacularly beautiful. So well thought-through with raw emotions seeping out on every page.
I’m not ashamed to say that this book made me tear up once and for so many different reasons. It takes a lot for me to ugly-sob, and I managed to control myself for this, but I’ve read a few other reviews and people have cried a lot. So, if you’re looking for an emotional read, look no further.
A really enchanting story and one I will talk about for years to come with a message everyone should remember. Props to Pearson for such a sincere and passionate book.
Keep your eyes peeled for this author… I’m expecting many more great things.
Missing Pieces, Laura Pearson, RRP £9.99 (paperback); Book Depository
Pages: 273
Publisher: Agora Books
Genre: Fiction