A rather sad story of a mother who has built a life with two beautiful sons, but longs for the baby daughter she gave away when she was a girl. There is a dramatic description of how her family in Trinidad had her smuggled to Venezuela to secretly give birth and leave her baby with the nuns there. Having trained as a doctor in the UK and her marriage to a fellow medic fails she keeps trying to find her daughter. There are lovely descriptions of her family's life in Trinidad and Tobago where she often comes to visit.

Let’s start by saying ‘I absolutely loved this book’.

It is set in both Trinidad and Tobago and also London. But the main narrative happens in the Caribbean. I wanted to look up all the places as I read about them, but the story was so compelling that .i didn’t want to stop and search.

Dawn is the only daughter of a Trinidadian white family who have made their money in business selling fruit juices. At 16 Dawn makes her great ‘mistake’. She gets pregnant from a one night stand with a tourist and her family arrange for her to have the baby adopted. The rest of the story describes the effect this has on her life.

I felt all the characters were fully rounded and believable. Dawn herself, who narrates the story, is like someone you might know. She is self aware, she does her best to make her life a success, and on the outside at least she succeeds.. But marriage, career, children, apart, she still has a deep secret and a sad void in her life. So she does her best to find out what happened to her first baby.

I loved the writing, I felt very involved in Dawn’s story, and could hardly wait to read some more as I wanted her so much to heal. The descriptions of life in Trinidad are fascinating. There are tensions in the history of this island, and there are changes that. affect her family. The matter of fact way that they accept new dangers such as having to be careful while walking a few yards on the beach, and to have locked gates as well as houses, really brings home the reality of how easy it is to lose an easy and comfortable life style.

The book brings these social and cultural changes into the story but keeps well to its central theme ; the ties and bonds of motherhood.

Look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for my ARC copy.

I wanted to, and believed that I would, love this but sadly it didn’t gel with me at all. I had to force myself to read the whole thing as I just wasn’t hooked by the story or characters.

The first few chapters had me hooked, I was pulled into this chaotic scene with Dawn, with no context or explanation. However, from there I found the book to drag a little. The descriptions of Trinidad were beautiful, I could see her family home in my mind and feel the heat of the sun. But everything else fell flat, the writing during her time in London, the upper echelon these characters all lived in, it was hard for me to find anything to resonate with. There was a message somewhere in this book about love and family but it seemed lost in the grand scheme of things, at least for me.