(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

'I talked to my mother the night she died, losing myself in memories of when we were happiest together. But I held one memory back, and it surfaces now, unbidden. I see a green postbox and a small hand stretching up to its oblong mouth. I am never sure whether that small hand is mine. But if not mine, whose?'
Louise Redmond left Ireland for London before she was twenty. Now, more than two decades later, her heart already breaking from a failing marriage, she is summoned home. Her mother is on her deathbed, and it is Louise's last chance to learn the whereabouts of a father she never knew.
Stubborn to the end, Marjorie refuses to fill in the pieces of her daughter's fragmented past. Then Louise unexpectedly finds a lead. A man called David Prescott . . . but is he really the father she's been trying to find? And who is the mysterious little girl who appears so often in her dreams? As each new piece of the puzzle leads to another question, Louise begins to suspect that the memories she most treasures could be a delicate web of lies.

Louie's mother has kept a lot of secrets about her father. Even on her deathbed, she won't give details about him to Louise. After her mother dies, Louise sets off in search of the man who is her father...

A great premise - families and their secrets are always good fodder for a novel - that actually lives up to its billing...but then gets let down by the details.

The mystery aspect of this story is done well. We get taken back in time as Louise begins to trace her family history and get in contact with other members of her extended family to try and shed some light on who her father was. Some tremendous twists and turns along the way, which kept the pages turning.

What almost made me stop reading was Louise herself. Not necessarily her, per se, but everything that is dumped on her throughout this book: not knowing who her father was; a mother who kept secrets from her; a difficult childhood; a broken marriage...is there anything else the author could have dumped on her? It became almost too much for me and, if it weren't for the twists of the story, I would have given up halfway through.


Paul
ARH