My Mother’s Choice is the kind of heart-wrenching story that stays with you for a very long time.
Book Description – My Mother’s Choice
Nobody talks about my mother. Absolutely nobody. I have no idea what she was like. I’d always thought they kept quiet about her because they were sad. But what if it was because they were guilty?
I watch them at the school gates, all the mothers with their daughters. I see the hugs and all those thoughtful little adjustments to scarves and ponytails. How their love seems to overflow, they have so much of it to give.
And then I walk home to my aunt’s cold house, where there are a hundred rules for me to follow and only a single photograph of my mother to look at.
She is never spoken about in this house. They tell me that it will be easier if I don’t think about her.
It is strange though, isn’t it? That I know nothing about my own mother?
But they don’t know about the diary I’ve found up in the loft. Maybe they even forgot it was there. It doesn’t matter anymore if they won’t tell me anything. Because within these pages is what I’ve waited fourteen years to find out. And maybe some things I wish I could forget.
All I wanted was to bring our family closer together, but could what I find tear us apart instead?
A heartbreaking and powerful novel about family secrets and how we live with decisions we never thought we would have to make. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Kate Hewitt and Amanda Prowse.
‘A heart-wrenching drama… an emotional rollercoaster with twists along the way… I read this in four hours and I know you’ll be hooked too.’
NetGalley Reviewer, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
My Review
How does a teenage girl who has almost no memory of her mother, living with an aunt who seems to barely tolerate her and a father who is hardly there, feel? Resentful. Angry. Frustrated. All of those things.
The only thing she has to hold on to is a single photograph of her mother and herself. She wonders why her mother is hardly ever spoken of. Nudged by a friend, she decides to look for more photographs to discover more about her Mom.
In the attic of her aunt’s home, she discovers her mother’s diary. And there begins her fresh quest to know more.
Did her father really love Laura, her mother? Does he even care about Dani? Is there a conspiracy of silence between her father and aunt? What are they hiding?
A teenage girl in search of answers to what, in a sense defines her, Dani sets off to find out more about her Mother’s life just before she drowned at sea.
What she uncovers is a lot more than she expected. Can she forgive? Can she move forward? Will she accept the way she was shielded and loved?
My Mother’s Choice shows us that love is expressed in so many different ways. And life is not always what we want it to be. Sometimes the people we love are trying to live and love in the way they think it’s best, and we have to make our peace with that.
Ali Mercer’s style of writing is very engaging and she constantly had me guessing about which way the story would go.
In many ways, this was a coming of age story. Dani has a fierce personality – a soft heart she hides behind a tough exterior – ready to stand up for her friends and finally being ready to accept the truth of her mother’s (and the other adults’) choice with grace and forgiveness.
I’m looking to read more of Ali Mercer’s books soon and would recommend this one to you.
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Author Bio
Ali decided she wanted to be a writer early on and wrote her first novel when she was at primary school. She did an English degree and spent her early twenties working in various jobs in journalism, including as a reporter for the show business newspaper The Stage. She started writing fiction in earnest after getting married, moving out of London to the Oxfordshire market town of Abingdon and starting a family. She has two children, a daughter and a son who is autistic and was diagnosed when he was four years old.
Ali is fascinated by families, their myths and secrets, and the forces that hold them together, split them up and (sometimes) bring them back together again. She always travels with tissues and a book and has been known to cry over a good story but is also a big fan of the hopeful ending.
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I received a ARC from NetGalley and the publisher, Bookouture in exchange for an honest review.