But, when Minnie becomes pregnant as a teenager, the truth must come out and there are dramatic consequences as she's reunited with her birth parents Anna and Julius. It's a story where a bad decision is made but where you will find it hard to condemn the person for making it, or for what follows. I will say that Mike Thripshaw really brought the humour to the story, even if it was unintentional on his part. He is power hungry, so ambitious that he will use anyone and anything to further his career including Anna, and Florence, but is so intolerable, with his unbearable, peacock attention seeking personality, that even the Tories are wary. It made me chuckle anyway, especially when he had a run of wrong sayings, all those old catchphrases we so commonly mishear.

For those not adverse to soap opera levels of melodrama and sentimentality, it may appeal, but I found it far too saccharine. His poor wife is devastated and feels like her heart has been ripped from her chest whilst he is wondering which of his suits to wear on TV.There is no way a hospital would release a post-partum mother just hours after a still-birth, placenta abruption and a hot shower, without addressing something as simple as even drying up the breast milk, let alone the huge psychological issues! I really wanted to like this book as I’ve read and reread “A Tiny Bit Marvellous” many times, finding it warm and snug and insightful. Maybe it's me, but I fail to see why there should even be an expectation of warm feelings here for someone who committed the unimaginable crime of stealing a newborn, no matter what circumstances drove her to do it or how much effort she put into raising that baby. Considering the gravity of past events, Minnie would be facing all the big – and VERY powerful and overwhelming – emotions that come thundering down on her all at once: to wit, deceit, death, rejection, abandonment, secrecy, shock, belonging, loss and many more; these could only to a tiny extent be mitigated by a mother’s devoted and unwavering love. I listened to this on audiobook, while reading (on kindle) both Hamnet and Where the Crawdads Sing both of which knocked the DF into a cocked hat; there is simply no comparison.

This is a fabulously entertaining and immersive read, of family, love, loss, grief, forgiveness and such courage and bravery that it left me breathless. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.The part I found most powerful was the letter Minnie wrote to her mother, where she says “I’m not from them, I’m from you.

It’s a solid enough piece of commercial fiction, but it seems destined to suffer when held against the supposed best fiction of the year.The Irish mid-wife, the African American politician father who only cares about what people think of him; (the African American aspect was merely a cheap and obvious device to ensure the child was mixed race). The start of a new Millennium – 1st of January 2000 – sees two couples in hospital in London, both in the throes of giving birth. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. French manages to pick your heart up with the nib of her pen and slowly pull it apart, heart-wrenchingly, page by page . But the build up of the relationship between Hope and 'her daughter' and the way the reveal was dealt with and how the daughter was reunited with her biological mother was acceptable.

There are other characters on the periphery of this story, but it is hard to talk about them without giving away too much of the story. Because of You is a story of a mother’s love, loss and sacrifice and shows how those bonds between a mother and child can never really be lost. When Minnie becomes pregnant at 17 it is discovered that she has a hereditary heart defect, inherited from her biological father, Julius.Because of You” is a family drama concerning a newborn girl that's stolen from a hospital by a grieving mother whose child died in birth. Because of You feels like it ought not to be a book but to be rushed, but the reality is it is a book that is almost impossible not to race through. The story then focusses mainly on the mother-daughter relationship as baby Minnie grows into womanhood and finds herself pregnant at 17. It was a little too saccharine for me on occasion and I found the ending difficult, but there is no doubt that the writing is sharp yet warm.