I REALLY wanted to like this book. I loved the writing styles, the premise of the story(ies) were great, BUT. I just could not keep up with each character and their separate point of view. It was too much back and forth and too much trying to remember who was who and which situation belonged to which person.

This was an emotional story about a baby who was taken from her unmarried mother without her ever seeing her daughter. The daughter was adopted and the story tells of the daughters determination to find her mother. Lots of ups and downs along the way and a lovely conclusion.

Really good book which I will recommend to others.

Thanks for the opportunity to read & review it.

At first this felt like a real slow burn of a novel, and if I wasn’t familiar with Ranald’s work I might not have carried on - however as the narrative picked up I was absolutely enthralled. Another well written novel with 3 dimensional characters.

Brilliant.

Orla Clifford inherits an old house from her grandmother and it becomes a labour of love for her to restore the crumbling house to what it once was. To help with the cost of renovations, Orla takes in Luke, a handyman who will help with the renovations to cover his living costs, and two additional borders, Livvie and Beatrice. Beatrice is a complex young woman who is searching for the answers to her past, Luke dreams of becoming an artist and Livvie is a soft and compassionate soul. Orla has her own secrets too which she pens into her diary every day. Slowly, comfortable relationships develop between them all as they go about their lives, all looking for something they are missing.

I felt the story was a little confusing when all the characters were being introduced in the first part of the book because it was a little difficult to understand which character was speaking, however it was worth persisting with as it's quite a moving read. The interactions and relationships forged between the characters are heartwarming and the twists revealed towards the end of the story provide some satisfying answers. This is a character-driven story about a group of strangers who come together for different reasons and who are ultimately searching for connection .

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a few chapters to get into this book. But I ended up really enjoying it!

This book felt pretty disjointed to me and it didn't hold my interest as a reader. I did like the concept of the story but I don't think I was the target market for this story.
Thankyou to Netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this book.

Emotional, gripping, and full of heart 💫💔. All Our Missing Pieces is a poignant story of love, loss, and rediscovery. Sophie Ranald’s writing is raw, relatable, and packed with emotional depth. I adored the exploration of grief, family, and the journey toward healing. A heartfelt, uplifting read for fans of character-driven contemporary fiction.

I love a found family book, however this one didn't quite make me feel that warm and fuzzy. It was difficult to follow for most of the book and there were areas that still don't make sense to me.

This book is about a group of random people, who all come to live in the same house and the secrets they keep for a variety of reasons. A sucker for found family, I expected to like this book much more than I did, but, while it did improve, I could never quite forgive this book for all the confusion it cause in the beginning and all the work I mentally had to do to read it. It’s multi-POV and dual-timeline. One of the timelines is labeled, but the other is not, so instead of just being able to enjoy the story, I was doing mental gymnastics trying to figure out when in time the 2nd timeline existed. Is it before or after the labeled one. The narrators are also not listed in the chapter header so every chapter you have to figure out all over again whose POV you’re in. It was exhausting and I put the book down over and over because I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I did persevere, and it did get easier to distinguish, but in the end, if I wasn’t reading this to provide an ARC review, I definitely would have DNF’d this book, and almost never DNF a book. I do thank Netgalley and Storm Publishing for an e-ARC provided to me in return for an honest review.

This was a very thought provoking read. I enjoyed the story, there was a great mix of characters and I enjoyed where the story went. Through sadness comes hope and there’s always something brighter on the horizon.

All Our Missing Pieces by Sophie Ranald offers an atmospheric and character-driven story set within the crumbling walls of a Georgian house filled with secrets. As Orla inherits her grandmother’s home, she opens its doors to three lodgers, each bringing their own complexities and emotional baggage. The slow unraveling of Orla's long-held secret creates an undercurrent of tension that carries the narrative forward.

Ranald does a lovely job building the house into a character itself—its creaks, hidden corners, and layered history add richness to the story. The evolving relationships between the housemates are tender and believable, and the themes of found family, healing, and forgiveness are handled thoughtfully.

However, the pacing feels uneven at times, and some of the character arcs could have been more deeply explored to deliver a stronger emotional punch. While the mystery element is intriguing, the resolution may feel a bit predictable for some readers. Still, All Our Missing Pieces remains an enjoyable, quietly compelling read for fans of domestic fiction and slow-burn family dramas.

A reasonable read, set in a house in London. Orla has inherited a house, but it needs a lot of renovation. She takes in two lodgers and is then joined by a third. All seem to have complicated lives, Beatrice is adopted and looking for her birthmother, Luke has recently split up from a girlfriend with whom he shareda flat and Livvie has problems with her parents and in a flatshare. The book documents their lives as they live together and is told from 3 points of view. I spent the first few chapters trying to sort out who the narrator was at that time and it changed mid-chapter, though that became easier to distinguish as the book progressed. I did not really feel that all the characters were fleshed out either. Luke was too two-dimensional for me and Beatrice seemed to undergo a personality transplant .Orla is fairly mysterious, there is a secret which is revealed during the book and exchanged for another. I suppose feelings are fairly well described but I am not sure about some of the reasoning.
I thought the book got better as it progressed and I started to enjoy it more too. A good holiday read, though there is a more serious side to it.
Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC

This is the first book I have read by this author. This was just an okay book for me. I felt like the story did not mesh well and it was difficult to figure out which character’s point of view I was reading until I was well into the chapter. The ending was not managed well and ended without there being any resolution for the cast of characters. That definitely takes away from my pleasure in reading a book. So me, this one was a meh, but I think there are enough positive reviews that you may want to explore whether you would enjoy the book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Storm Publishing for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

For more reviews, please visit my blog at: https://www.msladybugsbookreviews.com/. Over 1000 reviews posted!

Family

Thanks @netgalley , the author & publisher for the ARC.

This book is about 4 people, who are strangers who end up living together and the secrets that change their lives. I started off enjoying it, but then by the second half, it just felt like it was being dragged out.
It's a dual storyline from multiple perspectives, which for me I just found a bit too much to keep up with, as well as a bit strange that some chapters were 3rd person, some were 1st person. It all felt a bit haphazard/disjointed, which having read this author before, I know her writing not to be. Had this not been an ARC, I personally think I would've DNF'd it and maybe gone back to it at a much later date.

Loved the sound of this story when reading the blurb. Unfortunately the story is slightly disjointed with all the different pov and dual time zones left me confused as to who is which pov and storyline.
I finished the story wondering how I’d have felt if this was my life

This book had me a bit confused in the first bit. As we were still learning the main few characters, it felt confusing to decipher who each chapter was about. It felt a tad slow in the beginning but then the story became a very beautiful story.

Thank you to Netgalley and Storm Publishing for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book so much that I read it in one sitting. I loved the characters and their growth. I also enjoyed the storyline and the "friendly" ghost. I would definitely recommend this book.

I was really intrigued by the premise of this book and I think these characters and this storyline had some real potential! Unfortunately, the story as a whole did not work for me. I was most thrown off by the structure of the book: each chapter rotates through the perspective of 3 out of the 4 main characters (we never get one character's point of view, which I was curious about and would've added something quite interesting to this story), but the chapters aren't labeled with the characters' names, so you have to figure it out from context clues or from the constantly changing POV. One character's story was told through 3rd person POV, one through 1st person, and one was 1st person but through journal entries? As a reader, this was quite difficult for me to follow. I enjoyed the British setting, especially around Christmastime in the book, and there were some humorous moments between these characters/roommates. Overall, I felt disconnected from the characters and confused by the disjointed plot and narrative structure. I'm glad I got to read an ARC of this book, and I would consider reading something else by this author to see if her other books are more my style.

I thought this book was interesting but could have been a little bit more. One of the characters, Orla had had to give up her baby at birth due to the social pressures at the time in Ireland, and we’re not talking 1950s, but mid 1980s. This is the mainstay of the book but I felt could have been given more depth. The baby, Beatrice, now an adult sets out to find her birth mother. I don’t know whether it was Sophie Ranald’s intention, but I didn’t connect or like Beatrice and therefore found it difficult to connect with the story.