Dear Edie, I wanted you to know so many things. I wanted to tell you them in person, as you grew. But it wasn’t to be.
Jess never imagined she’d be navigating single motherhood, let alone while facing breast cancer. A life that should be just beginning is interrupted by worried looks, heavy conversations, and the possibility of leaving her daughter to grow up without her.
Propelled by a ticking clock, Jess knows what she has to do: tell her daughter everything. How to love, how to lose, how to forgive, and, most importantly, how to live when you never know how long you have.
From best-selling author Laura Pearson comes her most devastating book yet. Honest, heart-wrenching, and emotionally raw, I Wanted You To Know is a true love letter to life: to all its heartache and beauty, to the people we have and lose, to the memories and moments that define us.
I Wanted You To Know by Laura Pearson was published by Agora Books on 3 October 2019. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review and who invited me to take part on this Blog Tour
Beautiful, funny, heart-breaking, emotional, real, profound, compelling.
I could probably just list a long long line of words that perfectly sum up this novel, and then tell you all to go out buy it, read it and let me know what you think. I could do that, but that really wouldn't be fair.
There's a lot of talk about 'trigger warnings' being used in book reviews, and to be honest, it's not something that I'm a huge fan of. Nobody knows just what would trigger another reader; it could be something that another person wouldn't give a second thought to. However, I do feel that reading I Wanted You To Know is probably the nearest that I've come to being 'triggered' by fiction.
It's almost a year since my oldest friend died from cancer. Not one day passes where I don't think about her, where I don't miss her, and wish that she were still here. If you are a friend, or a mother, or a sister of someone with cancer; then prepare yourself before you read this; it's so incredibly perceptive that I honestly feel as the author has been by my side. Laura Pearson tells her readers that she was diagnosed with cancer when she was thirty-five, and it is from that experience that she has based this heart-breaking story on.
Jess is just twenty-one years old. She's a single mother to tiny Edie and is living with her own mother. When she is told that she has breast cancer, she's shell-shocked. Life is difficult enough; trying to get used to being a mother; dealing with her very fraught relationship with her own mother and deciding if she will ever introduce Edie to her father. Cancer .... she's twenty-one ....
Laura Pearson's emotive and astute novel is heart-breaking at times. However, it is also an ode to female relationships and it's the support and love that Jess gets from her best friend Gemma that really touched me the most. There is no doubt at all that this story line will affect all readers, and even though it's utterly devastating, it's also a beautifully written story about the love of a friend.
Throughout the novel, the author has included letters written by Jess, to her baby daughter Edie. This is a clever touch and enables the reader to have an insight into just exactly how Jess feels about her diagnosis and what she wants for Edie's future. A stark contrast to Jess's often spiky and resistant mannerisms in the other parts of the book.
Powerful, uplifting and tender; I Wanted You To Know is Laura Pearson's best book to date.
Highly recommended
Laura Pearson has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester.
She lives in Leicestershire with her husband and their two children.
Her third novel, I Wanted You To Know, is available now to pre-order.
Website : www.laurapearsonauthor.com
Twitter : @LauraPAuthor
Author Page on Facebook
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