I’m delighted to be part of the blog tour for The Lost Wife, written by Anna Mansell and published by Bookouture. It seems to be the day for redheads, as the lovely Meggy from Chocolate’n’Waffles is also on the tour today, so please pop over to her blog to read her review too. 🙂
Blurb:
Fans of Sheila O’Flanagan, Amanda Prowse and Kelly Rimmer will love The Lost Wife, the compelling story of a woman’s deepest secrets, and the friends and family who must learn to live without her.
‘An incredible, beautiful story of loss, love, forgiveness, moving on, overcoming grief, redemption and above all, hope.’ Renita D’Silva
When Ellie Moran passes away, she leaves her newborn son and husband Ed behind her. Their marriage was perfect, their lives everything they had hoped for. So why was Ellie keeping secrets from Ed?
Knowing he can never ask his wife the truth, Ed is struggling to cope. When the secrets threaten to tear his whole family apart, Ed turns to Rachel, the one person who sees him as more than just Ellie’s widower.
But then Rachel discovers something Ellie was hiding, something that would break Ed’s heart. Can Rachel help Ed to find peace without the wife he lost – and a second chance at happiness?
My Review:
Having thoroughly enjoyed How to Mend a Broken Heart, I was dying to read this book by the same author.
The Lost Wife is told at the perfect pace, allowing me to enjoy this emotional journey at a comfortable speed, while at the same time finding it really hard to put down.
The author has created some wonderful characters that I found myself really caring about. Sometimes I found it very emotional seeing what they were going through. Despite this being an emotional read, I would say it has an overall uplifting feel to it and sometimes rather funny.
A particular part of this story made me think about how I never met my grandad’s brother until my grandad’s funeral two years ago. He seemed so much like my grandad, who I loved so much. He was also covered in tattoos just like my grandad, as their father was a tattooist, and used to try out tattoos on them both. How did I live 37 years of my life never meeting my grandad’s brother? I would have loved to have seen them both together.
On a most positive note, who doesn’t love a cheesy pineapple hedgehog, and I have to agree with Rachel, I’d marry Tom Hardy too. ❤
I also found it entertaining that Rachel and Mo chose to watch Dirty Dancing, because just before reading this book I watched it three nights in a row. I watched the 2017 remake the first night, the original on the second, and Havana Nights on the third. I think I’m the only person I know who loves the 2017 remake. I feel so alone in this, so I wanted to ask Rachel and Mo to watch the 2017 version and let me know what they thought of it. I’m so desperate to find someone who likes it, that I’m now eager to encourage fictional characters in a book to watch it. What does that say about me?!
I laughed heartily at the reference to living like students and there being road cones in a house. I believe I was about seventeen when I woke up one morning after a night of drinking, to discover a bright orange road cone in the middle of my bedroom. I was too hungover to remember how I explained that one to my parents, but that cone lived in my bedroom until I moved out. Oh, the nostalgia.
I highly recommend this to fans of great fictional characters within a story of love, loss, grief, but also funny and feel good moments and definitely the important ingredient that is hope. I can’t wait to see what Anna Mansell comes up with next.
4 Stars
Where to find this book:
About the Author:
Anna had a brush with ‘fame’ as a magician’s assistant back in 1977. She later decided that being sawn in half by her father, at barely 6 months old, was too submissive a role, vowing to channel the trauma in to something much more pro-actively creative. Having failed at acting, singing and professional murder mystery parties (she was ALWAYs the one to die!), she fell to something much more solitary: writing. How To Mend a Broken Heart is her first novel and her life was not on the line in order to write it, or her second: The Lost Wife. Anna lives on a dairy farm in Cornwall with her two children, her husband, and her ex-racing greyhound, Olive Dog.
Where to find the author:
LittleMissNoSleep Daydreams of Books 
This sounds lovely, I didn’t know they had remade Dirty Dancing. I have to say I always preferred Havana Nights to the original, it always felt more authentic to me.
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The Lost Wife is a lovely read, Claire 🙂 I love Dirty Dancing so much. I think the 2017 remake was a made for TV movie. It was on Channel 5 recently. I watched it on catch up about 5 times in a fortnight, ha ha 🙂 It’s very similar to the original, in that a lot of the scenes and lines are similar, but there are parts of it that are quite different. Some characters fit right in with the originals, while others took a bit more getting used to. Oh, I love Havana Nights, and I agree with you that it feels more authentic 🙂
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I will look out for the remake! Just out of curiosity!
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