I read this book during my vacation in Portugal, after few months coming back to reading on my Kindle (I’d need another suitcase to take all the books I wanted for vacation, so Kindle, as always, proved handy in this situation). I have no idea how this book got there, I have no recollection of buying it, but maybe it was from the shared library. The title and the cover looked like a light read, a chic-lit actually, a genre I usually avoid, but since I was on vacation I decided to give it a go as a quick read.

Already the beginning is surprising, our protagonist, Holly Smith, is eight years old and over fillet o’fish is being told by her mother that she is adopted. She has always felt like she does not fit in so the announcement does not come as a huge shock. She regrets more that she was not allowed to see Miss Saigon till the end. Then the story jumps to 2014, when Holly’s mother dies. This combined with her awful and constantly worsening relationship with her boss leads Holly to a snap decision to move from London to Liverpool to search for her biological mother.

Here the story takes a turn which had me thinking, it is chic-lit and a romance in the end, but thankfully this is quickly resolved as Holly finds a hidden diary in the apartment where her mother lived. From here on the story becomes a lot darker, though it retains glimpses of humour throughout. With topics such as adoption, child abuse, Toxteeth riots, abortion and transgender people it is not a light read per se, but Harvey manages to keep the precious balance.

It is not a book that will change my life, but it was better than anything I expected, even if it took more than one unbelievable turn.

Photo by Violetta Kaszubowska @vkphotospace.com