Because of You: The beautifully uplifting Richard & Judy bestseller

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It is by the UK comedienne (and now something of a national treasure) Dawn French. With her first being involved with the Comic Strip when I was about 14 (and just discovering alternative comedy), I feel like I grew up with her comedy through Girls on Top and BBC2 French and Saunders (before they moved to BBC1 and a big budget and got a little too self-indulgent), but before her move rather to the safety of the mainstream with The Vicar of Dibley. What other books have you written by celebrity authors? Why did you choose them? Did you enjoy them? What advantages and disadvantages do celebrity authors face? While Dawn French's latest novel contains a dash of humour, it's also heart-wrenching The Hunsbury Handbook The humor in all situations felt forced to me, the characters and their behaviors illogical and unrealistic especially for the situations they were in, also no character actually had real characteristics. I can’t even remember the names of them… i think the stillborn was called Minnie. That should tell you something, if i can only remember that name! It all felt a bit random and disconnected, jumping from one thing to the next. The time jumps in the book certainly didn’t help with that. Minnie is raised in a much lower social class than she was born into. The vocabulary of the incredibly immature Hope, and how she raises Minnie as her BFF, is really grating.

Because of You is a gloriously, beautiful book. I knew what Hope had done was so wrong and on many levels evil, but I also couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Grief is a strange and difficult emotion to control and I can understand the want to hold a baby and love a child like the one she had lost. At the same time, she causes so much grief to the other family by taking their daughter.Terrible. Dawn French is a talented comedian, but this book is dreadful and so unrealistic with so many errors. There seems to have been no research done on any of the themes. How did it get past the editor? My review is of the audio book version, as well as the story. I’m rather an audio book novice – I have this terrible habit of falling asleep whilst listening to books – its not boredom – especially not in this case, but rather a voice in my ear soothing me to sleep! Dawn French said in her interview that she wanted to explore the themes of nature vs nurture and loss. Honestly, the very thought of hinging the exploration of nature vs nurture on a stolen baby and a stillbirth makes me uncomfortable as a parent. The exploration of loss felt no more than a lip service as it seemed like the author wanted to generate warm feelings for Hope in the readers' minds, so she conveniently chose to sideline the grief of Anna. 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. As a parent, this not only felt disturbing to me but it also felt offensive.

I absolutely loved Because of You. Fantastic, passionate, compassionate, so much wisdom, a lot of humour, very real and credible' BERNARDINE EVARISTO, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other Dawn has starred in hit comedies such as The Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders making her a household name for comedy fans around the world. French and Saunders was created with her comedy partner and best friend Jennifer Saunders. Whether it is hosting a TV show in Australia or her countless guest appearances on a huge number of shows, Dawn remains a mainstay on TV screens to this day. In Because of You, Hope gives birth to a still born baby and goes on to steal the child of another woman, Anna, who had given birth the same hospital that night. Hope raises the child Minnie as her own. When Minnie becomes pregnant at 17 it is discovered that she has a hereditary heart defect, inherited from her biological father, Julius. Hope tells her Minnnie the truth of her birth, before handing herself in to the police. It is then that events speed on to a dramatic conclusion. 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. The warmth of the mother / daughter relationship (with both mothers) was there and true to the Dawn we think we know.Seventeen years later, the gods who keep watch over broken-hearted mothers wreak mighty revenge, and the truth starts rolling, terrible and deep, toward them all. Yes. I think so. I don’t know when, but I’m just going to reduce everything so that if this hits us again and again, I can survive. It’s a shame. It wouldn’t normally be the case for me. A bright, brilliant and heartbreaking tale of two mothers, two babies and the far-reaching consequences of one fateful day Yahoo! Style