I will preface this post to add that I wrote this three months ago, completely forgot I had done so, and have just found it in my drafts. So here it is!
I am dog sitting for a week (as I write this, but not when this post comes out) in a friend's house. Alone. Their dog is here, I am here, they are not here.
But in the room I am sleeping in, there is a stack of books. And do you think I could resist that?!
I found this book in the stack, and read it. I am only dog/house sitting for a week, so I know there's no way I'd ever get through the entire stack, but there are other books there that look good, so we'll see.
Anyway, let me introduce the book, and I'll get into my review!
Imagine you meet a man, spend seven glorious days together, and fall in love. And it’s mutual: you’ve never been so certain of anything.
So when he leaves for a long-booked holiday and promises to call from the airport, you have no cause to doubt him.
But he doesn’t call.
Your friends tell you to forget him, but you know they're wrong: something must have happened; there must be a reason for his silence.
What do you do when you finally discover you're right? That there is a reason – and that reason is the one thing you didn't share with each other?
The truth.
My Review!
Sarah had just got out of a loveless marriage and returned to England, from America, to visit her family when she met Eddie. But after seven days of completely falling in love with him, Eddie leaves to go on holiday, with a promise to call Sarah. But Sarah’s phone never rang, and she can’t seem to get in touch with Eddie at all. It seems like he’s simply disappeared.
Sarah’s friends tell her to move on, to forget about the guy she only knew for a week, but she can’t. Deep inside, Sarah is concerned for Eddie, scared something might’ve happened to him to prevent him from replying to her. Her theories develop as she tried to justify his lack of a response, but the more time that passes, she starts to wonder just how long she can keep up trying to get hold of him. She’s not just had an emotional impaction, she is struggling to eat, to sleep, to focus. She has been thrown into a whirlwind, and she can’t quite figure out how to escape.
There are a lot of secrets in this book, secrets kept between the characters, and also some kept from the reader. The more you read, the more you learn, until a twist will completely flip things, and change your perspective of entire chapters. The truth is something that neither Sarah, or Eddie, have told each other. And while neither was dishonest, the truths that they withheld left them both lost.
Sarah is a character that I instantly liked. She clings to those seven days she spent with Eddie, even though her friends think it’s ridiculous. I can see how some readers might see the situation like her friends see it, as a seven day fling, that ended as soon as it started. But Sarah has spent her entire life in loveless relationships, trying to give love but gaining little in return, and when she met Eddie, she finally felt that love, that passion, from his end, not just her own. And for her, feeling something so strong, so quickly, is difficult to move on from.
With different characters come different problems, different emotional states and challenges. There is plenty of representation of different medical problems, which I think were depicted fabulously. In particular, I thought Eddie’s relationship with his mother was incredibly realistic. His mother has several mental illnesses, and although he doesn’t consider himself to be her carer, he is the person she completely relies on. If she calls, he feels an obligation to go and make sure she is alright, even though she doesn’t really realise how much he does for her, and how thankful she should really be. Eddie’s feelings of guilt, that he should be putting her needs above his own, were incredibly realistic, especially as he struggled to figure out how he could live his own life while trying to accommodate for her needs. The sub-plots, like this one, really added to the story, and fleshed out already incredibly realistic characters.
Sarah and Eddie’s relationship isn’t really something that happens in this book. This isn’t a love story, where the characters fall in love over the course of the novel. They barely see each other throughout this book, and it’s the separation, and lack of communication, that builds the doubt, the emotion. There are several rather large twists in this book, the author has a knack for being able to make the reader think one way, and then reveal that they’ve been thinking wrong the entire time. By releasing Sarah’s backstory slowly, giving the context piece by piece, the truth slowly pieces itself together for the reader, as well as the characters. Withholding the truth is what put Sarah and Eddie in such a mess, but it makes a wonderful writing style!
When I started reading this book, I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into. I had never heard of it before, didn’t know anything about it, I just picked it up on a whim and started reading. It is, quite honestly, an absolutely amazing book, that spoke to me on so many more levels than I was expecting. I borrowed the copy of this book that I read, but this is a book I’m going to have to get myself a copy of, because I’ll definitely be reading it again and again.
And done!
I've seen quite a few reviews saying that this book was boring, that people didn't like the characters, and it dragged. I thought it was absolutely amazing – I do wonder if I read a different book than they did. Definitely going up high on my list of 'books I absolutely loved'.
Anyway, that's all for now...
Bye!
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