Excellent Debut Novel

A debut novel from Ali Mercer, that I was kindly gifted, was a great surprise of a character driven story that unravelled like the layers of an onion.

It deals with three women who are brought together as they share a common loss. For different reasons each has lost a child. The emotional pendulum is driven by ego, deception, warmth, guilt and twisted lack of true emotions including the weakness of people who spend a lifetime blaming others for the hurt they inflict.

The book explores the the power of friendship and the value, and reward, that trust can offer. It equally exposes the destruction that is wrought from trusting wrongly.

I loved the lead character. She has a strength and humanity that is admirable.

To delve too deeply into all the main characters would be a spoiler, but suffice it to say that the reader will form love and hate relationships with them all as the eloquent way in which Ali Mercer writes, guides you into their psyches.

The only let down for me, and it’s a personal preference, is I wished for a slightly different ending. There’s nothing wrong with the authors completion of her story, but for me the outcome was not befitting enough.

It’s a very good read and I can honestly say that once the story got going I couldn’t put it down. I had to know ...!

I loved the narrator, Helen Duff. Beautiful diction and extraordinarily good accents. She fell into each character with ease and her interpretation of each was absolutely fitting. I shall look out for books narrated by her in the future.

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1 person found this helpful

A lovely character driven story with heartfelt mom

I listened to this on audio book via Audible.

This was the first story I listened to/read by this author Ali Mercer, so I didn't know what to expect but I liked the sound of the blurb and the book cover was very appealing.

It was a good story however it did take me awhile to get through it, simply because this was a character driven story rather than a plot driven story which is what I tend to read/listen to.

However with that said I enjoyed getting to know all of the characters and experiencing what each of them goes through and how they each come out of it at the end. It was really interesting to see how the different relationships of the individual characters change and react throughout the story.

So if your a fan of character driven story with heartfelt and emotional moments, then be sure to give this story a go.

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Character Driven

The story of three women separated from their children for very different reasons, centred mainly around Rachel. There are indications that Rachel is at fault for her current situation and is struggling to come to terms with it. Meeting Leona and Viv gives her some focus and allows her to start rebuilding her life. This was very much a character led book, not what I expected originally from the summary, but very good. Moving from the past to present to set the scene it drew you in with superb story telling and narration so you wanted to know what happened to the three women and their children.

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An enjoyable domestic drama

I was lucky enough to receive a credit for this audiobook. Looking at the title and cover I expected to be reading about an abducted child. However, this is more of a domestic drama. The story centres around three women who form an unlikely bond, owing to the fact that they’re each separated from a child. Slowly as the story unfolds, the past lives of the women are revealed, and their present situations begin to unravel.
The book is more character than plot driven, but despite that there are twists and turns and I felt myself itching to find out how the story would pan out.
The narrator was very good- I wasn’t aware of her reading- which to any audiobook fan, is a definite plus. I gave the book 4 stars overall and would read more from Ali Mercer.

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Really confusing storyline

This story begins in a thoroughly confusing manner. All I can gather is that there is some distressing family secret crisis going on. By chapter 5, I still hadn't sorted out in my mind who is who in the family (who is Sophie, who is Mitch, who is Rebecca, who is Rachel, and are they all in the same family?) and what exactly is happening? To me, this is an unacceptably long time to expect a listener to keep going with a book with nothing making sense. It also seems to jump between past and present, always hinting at this mysterious secret crisis but never actually explaining anything.
By chapter 8 I had worked out that Rachel is the ex wife of Mitch and Rebecca is their daughter.

By chapter 13 we are still given no more clue than that Rachel has done 'something awful' , had some kind of breakdown, and hurt Rebecca and Mitch in some way.

Chapter 15 and we find out more about a side character called Viv, who had to give her son Aidan up to an institution when he was 3, after he was diagnosed with infant schizophrenia. He's now middle aged and she's visiting him. There's also another character called Leona, who gave up her infant daughter for adoption 7 years ago and who has formed a support group she's invited Rebecca to join. Wondering if this book is actually an exploration on the theme of mothers who have lost their children. Is that why it's called 'Lost Child'? Duh. But we don't even begin to find out Leona's backstory till chapter 31!!

By chapter 17, Rachel has almost confessed her secret to a friend in the "lost child" group, but maddeningly, she stops after one sentence. The mingy amount of information and teeny little clues we are stingily allowed starts to feel like trying to milk blood from a stone. All we are granted is the tiny snippet that Rachel was grieving the death of her mother at the time of the "incident".

By chapter 21 we are granted a few more snippets of info about "the thing" and learn that Rachel stabbed Mitch in the hand on Becca's birthday, breaking one if his paintings.

This isn't dramatic tension. It's just plain irritating.

Chapter 27 and we learn that Rachel sank into a deep depression after her mothers death. She starts to become annoyingly wet and pathetic as she spirals downwards.

By the end of the first part of the audiobook I still don't know what actually happened other than Rachel was jealous of Mitch and caused a scene at their friends Mary's house. The drip feed was so irritating by this time that I almost turned to another book rather than downloading part 2.

I sensed early on that this is one of those annoying books you have to wade through once, wait to get to the end to find out what's happening, then listen to it all over again from the start in order to make sense of it. But really.... Life is too short.

Finally, by chapter 37, the whole sorry incident is unveiled. By then, it was just an anticlimax. Rach attacks Mitch in a paranoid fit of groundless jealousy. And I just don't care anymore.

The last remaining threads are finally drawn together near (what I assumed was) the end, when it becomes clear that Rachel's issues stem from her childhood with a controlling abusive father.

Unbelievably, the story then drags on, exposing yet more convoluted, unbelievable and sordid details which just made me dislike the characters more. Seriously, the lovely Mitch suddenly turns into a bastard who starts seeing two other women at once behind Rachel's back and impregnates one of them? By chapter 51, I was seriously losing the will to live. At least I finally found out what Leona did to lose her baby.

All in all an unecessarily looooong drawn out story which could have been told so much more simply and clearly. It was a test of patience to make myself finish the book. As it is, what I thought was the ending is screamingly predictable. OMG. Rachel is the only one who is surprised. And then the books contiunues dragging on, as if the author is thinking "But wait, this book is too boring, I must inject more scandal". Just stop love. Stop now. I will be returning this book for an immediate refund.

I should have been warned by the very poorly written blurb and steered clear of this book altogether.

The narrator has a pleasant, soothing, nicely spoken English voice, measured and fairly expressive. She does different accents very well too. But the story was so slow paced that it lost me early on and I only used it to help me get to sleep at night.

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