“Grief sends your thinking into all kinds of weird places. It makes you come up with all sorts of strange rules.”

This book follows Tom Hope as he picks himself and his family up following the death of his wife. Told from the points of view of both Tom and his mother-in-law, Linda, the book explores grief, parenting, responsibility and single fatherhood. From beginning to end Gayle invites the reader on a journey to watch Tom put himself and his family back together again – perhaps not in the same places as before.

Bittersweet but down to earth is the tone of Mike Gayle’s writing and this book is no exception. I could not stop reading this until I reached the end – it was just so beautifully written. Quite a few reviews have commented on the ‘sickly sweetness’ of this book but it’s absolutely not (in my opinion) and has just the right doses of warmth, despair, grief, achievement and strength. Whilst the book centres around a sadness – it’s not ‘sad’. The characters are us – you and I – that person walking down the street, someone you’ve passed in the grocery store… the characters are human and I think that’s what makes this a fantastic read and I could totally see there being another book revisiting this family in the future!

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Publication date: 2016

Where to buy? Amazon have this on offer right now for Kindle at £1.99.