Don't you hate it when you have high hopes for a book and then it's just blah. That's what happened with me with this book.

Cecilia House was supposed to be a place of love, kindness and warmth. Patricia was sent there at a young age. She soon discovers it's a place of sadness and pain.

Gandossi didn't develop the characters very well. They had no depth and I wasn't invested in them. The writing was just meh. Not totally bad, but close. It was very clunky.

Thanks to Netgalley for the Kindle Version of the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

While I am grateful to the author and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this title, a busy schedule got in the way, and I was unable to read it before it was archived on Netgalley. I will be looking for a physical copy of this title at my local bookstore!

Celcilia House was an interesting story and worth reading. I am giving three and a half stars. I would love to see what else this author writes.

Loved this book! I have read stories about these homes and the abuse the children received. It is horrifying and I am glad someone wrote a good book about it. Well written. I read it in a day, did not want to put it down!
#CeciliaHouse #NetGalley

When Pat loses her family to a car crash at a young age she is forced to live in a home for orphans and unwanted children.
The home is run by nuns who are cruel and incompassionate and the situations she has to endure show her how strong and resilient she is. There are some unexplained deaths and many injustices that are happening at the home but the Catholic church turns a blind eye.

Thank you NetGalley for this book.

Three young girls are best friends. They do everything together. They play in their treehouse, they go to school together, they share their lives. They promise each other to he friends forever. They decide they will grow up and travel together. That is their dream.
As life goes on their lives change. Tragic and unfortunate things happen in their lives.
Pat, one of the three girls dies. Her daughter finds her diary about her life and things that had happened during her life. She is horrified! She never knew about the things her mother had lived through.
This is a story of friendship, love, family, betrayal, religion. Most of all it is a story of unforgettable courage and determination.
Definitely worth reading and reading again!
Absolutely Recommended!

A strange book to read but very believable of how things can happen to children .There was a storyline about a young girl and the life she had at home then at a convent. The abuse that the inmates received from the nuns.There was a lot of sadness and horror but the story did have a happy ending.

I think with a little trimming, editing and refining, this would be an excellent story. As it was, I felt it was just okay. It took a long, repetitive while to get going and by then I was not as sympathetic to Pat as I should of been, due to the long windup being a tad too tedious.

Life is a precious gift and it can change within the blink of an eye, something Patricia discovered at a young age. After an extremely tragic event her loving family, good friends and many dreams and aspirations were all gone. An unwanted child sent to what was supposed to be a place of lovingness and warmth. Instead, she soon discovered that those responsible for her care added so much more pain and sadness to many lives. What occurred within the walls of Cecilia House was one of the most despicable and unimaginable acts to ever happen within an organization whose duty it was to protect innocent children....description from the publisher.

I found this book to be entirely too long. The first half of the book was filled with absolutely nothing but mundane day to day life of a young girl. I almost stopped reading it. The story didn’t pick up until after the death of Patricia’s friend. The next section was more interesting until nearer to the end. When Patricia’s story finishes and we get to her daughter’s part is the book I felt it was almost written by an entirely different author. The story itself is tragic but it was easy to know what the outcome was going to be.

Cecilia House was a really tough read but I knew it would be so before I read the first chapter. Patricia was a likeable character which made the reading of this book even more difficult, not that anybody on this earth, regardless of character, behaviour or actions, would have to endure the torment and sufferings that those poor residents of Cecilia House had to endure. I read on picturing her and her young friends, and the many more young boys and girls who suffered at the hands of those with whom their care was entrusted, teachers, supervisors, the religious, the lay people, it was unbelievable, unspeakable, God bless them all and may those who perpetrated these crimes upon them suffer consequences in the next life if not in this one.

Well written book. Life is a precious gift and nobody know this more now but Pat.Pat was in a bad car wreck that kills her parents and big Sister . She spends a very long time in hospital. When they let her out they take her to this home forunwanted children and orphans. Its called Ceicilia House. Nuns run it. She can no longer see her best friend or her new friend Cath. Cath she had met through her best friend Wendy. But Wendy's father murdered her . Cath helps Gladys and Pat through Wendys death . Then when Pat looses her whole family Cath helps when they let her. Nobody will let Cath keep Pat.
When Pat is moved to Cecilia houce they block Gladys and Cath from Pat. The nuns are very mean. They have killed a 7 year old and make the other girls burry her. So much more. Thank you Netgally for this book.

Excellent writing and so informative about a shameful Catholic run orphanage in the 1940's. While the story starts out slowly, if you stay with it, you will find yourself immersed in what actually happened to the author's mother. It is heartbreaking in the extreme to read an account of the shameful acts occurring in this orphanage run by Catholic nuns. These young girls suffered such extreme cruelty in so many varied ways, that it will not fail to disturb you. Only in reading and bearing witness were these priests and nuns stopped all over the world from continuing their abuses. The ending confirms my faith in the kindness of ordinary people.

This book is a horror story of what happens to a young woman when her entire family is killed in a car accident. As the lone survivor, her life becomes one unending unspeakable horror. That is the gist of the story.

I would not recommend this book to anyone. I’m astonished that I stuck with it as long as I did., naively hoping things would change for the better. The writing is flat, as are the characters. I had high hopes for this book, which, alas, were dashed.

I received this book as an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley.

The main character of the story, Pat describes her really sad and tragic time after the loss of her parents. She stays in a catholic orphanage where she experiences all sorts of traumatic events.
I found too big a contrast between her life at home (really good family) and the horrors of the orphanage. The latter are too extreme on too many levels. I quickly guessed what would next happen and so till the end.
This is my first book by this author. I will read a second one and see what I think of it. Nevertheless thank you for letting me read this book.

This is a story that has a lot of potential. The storyline is worth the read, but beware, the writing is extremely amateurish and there are many errors in the text. If you can get past that, the ending is wrapped up nicely.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book to read and review. The opinions expressed here are my own.