My thoughts…
I cried. I really did. I cried and I had to take at least forty-eight hours before writing my review because my words just wouldn’t come out properly and I really needed to think. So I truly hope that I do this book justice. Firstly, I am truly honoured that this book kick-started my 2020 reading. It’s been on my Kindle for quite a while and was part of my reading goals for 2020 – to read more of what I already own, whilst also making sure I keep up with my reviewing tasks. I needed to treat myself to a book that I wanted to read to start the year off – rather than one that was awesome but that I was reading to a reviewing deadline. This was perfect for that.
Emma writes powerfully – she has equal doses of humour and devastation in her writing. She will have you laughing at one paragraph and distraught by the next. She will have you reading for several hours straight just to get to the end of the book and find out what happens – at the same time you will be absolutely devastated that it’s over.
Massive themes are explored within this book, from single-parenting to loss, discovery to grief, personal struggles and family trauma – Emma traverses all of these with an immense talent for words, for phrasing and for painting characters you will absolutely adore. If this is on your list to read this year, bump it up, you won’t regret it.
About the book…
If Melody hadn’t run out of de-icer that day, she would never have slipped and banged her head. She wouldn’t be left with a condition that makes her sing when she’s nervous. And she definitely wouldn’t have belted out the Arctic Monkeys’ ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ in assembly at her son’s school.
If Dev hadn’t taken the kids to the zoo that day, then the accident wouldn’t have happened. He wouldn’t have left Flynn and Rose without a dad. Or shattered the love of his life’s heart.
But if they hadn’t seen the missing person report that day, they might never have taken the trip to Cornwall. And, in the last place they expected, discovered what it really means to be ‘Us’.
Genre: Romance/Fiction
Publication: September 20th 2018
About the author…
The Songs of Us was inspired by Emma’s love of music and her ability to almost always embarrass herself, and her children, in the most mundane of situations. She was so fascinated by the idea of combining the two, that she began to write Melody’s story. Working full-time with a large family meant that Emma had to steal snippets of ‘spare’ time from her already chaotic and disorganised life; the majority of her novel was written during her lunchtime in a tiny school office. She never expected to fall so deeply in love with the King family and is overwhelmed that others feel the same.
She has three loves in life: reading, writing and her family…oh, and music, cheese, pizza, films – Maths is not one of her talents. Emma’s latest book, The First Time I Saw You, is out in paperback on the 9th January 2020.
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[…] I started off the year with the first book I’d ever read by her (you can read my review here) and I can’t stop! Emma’s latest book has just been published and I devoured it. Not […]