Things We Never Said by Nick Alexander
Published by Lake Union Publishing on September 4, 2018
Genres: Contemporary, Fiction, Literature & Fiction
Pages: 348
Format: ARC
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All the love she ever gave. Every secret she never told.
Catherine was the love of Sean’s life. But now she is gone. All that’s left is a box full of envelopes, each containing a snapshot and a cassette tape.
Through a series of recordings, Catherine shares their long love story, but will Sean recognize the story she tells? Catherine’s words have been chosen with love, but are painfully honest—and sometimes simply painful. She reveals every unspoken thought and every secret she kept from her husband—revelations that will shake everything Sean thought he knew about their life together.
But as disconcerting as the tapes turn out to be, Sean prays that they will ultimately confirm the one thing he never dared question. Does destiny exist? And were his and Catherine’s love and life together always meant to be?
Revised edition: This edition of Things We Never Said includes editorial revisions.
When I saw the title of this book – Things We Never Said by Nick Alexander – I was intrigued enough to read the description of the book. I’ll admit I was a little worried that it would be too emotionally charged given my current real life status.
Things We Never Said starts out with the funeral of Catherine, who has passed leaving her husband, Sean, April and Maggie to mourn for her. As everyone is trying to come to terms with their loss, Maggie visits Sean and gives him a package, which turns out to be 29 numbered envelopes with instructions in the first one about opening the rest of them one week at a time. There’s also a photograph and a cassette with Catherine explaining what she’s doing with the journal of her life.
Catherine has planned this journal to be read by Sean after her death, sharing things with him both painful and beautiful things she could never say when she was alive. In order to “talk” to Sean, Catherine uses photos and cassette tapes to share her memories – some that are already known by Sean and some that are not.
I really connected emotionally with this story and these characters. There were times that the story was uplifting and other times that were actually amusing. The story shares how both a father and daughter can come to terms with the loss of a wife and mother in very different ways.
I was born in 1964 in the seaside town of Margate, Kent. I was the fifth child in a family of painters. As a child, I talked constantly and when forbidden to talk (at school, for example), I wrote. In my mid twenties, I moved to France and while earning a living in IT, I started working part-time on my first novel – a task that was initiated (and abandoned) many, many times. Finally, in 2001, I finished a gay fiction title called 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye. A friend at The Times told me that I should get it published, which was unexpected to say the least. I truly hadn’t considered it good enough. For a few years I tried to find a publisher or an agent, but it was a hopeless, thankless, depressing task so I gave up and self published the book with Lulu.com. To my surprise, it sold well, becoming one of the UK’s best selling gay fiction titles.
By 2010, five novels later, I felt that I had said all I wanted to in the gay fiction genre, so I decided to write my own take on the popular Chicklit genre, instead. Still unable to find a publisher, I self published The Case Of The Missing Boyfriend on Amazon’s then brand-new Kindle platform. The response was truly astounding. The book went to #1 and sold over 300,000 copies, and the sequel, The French House, did even better. I followed these up with two Family Saga titles, The Half-Life of Hannah (2013), and Other Halves(2014). The Half-Life of Hannah went on to become the 4th bestselling indy title of all time in Amazon’s UK kindle store. My 2015 title The Photographer’s Wife reached #1 in the UK chart and sold over 180,000 copies, and my 2016 title The Other Son reached #3 and has so far sold almost 100,000 copies (as of writing it is still in the top 100).
From these successes came a slew of international deals, so now The Case of the Missing Boyfriend has been translated into Italian (L’ambigue vérità del cuoré) and The Photographer’s Wife into French (La femme du Photographe). The Half-life of Hannah and Other Halves have both been #1 hits in Norway, and The Other Son is has been translated into Turkish, French, Italian, German and Spanish. Let the Light Shine, a family drama was released on the 30th of September, 2016 and later republished as The Bottle of Tears. It has been translated into French and has been a #1 hit in France. All in all, I have sold over a million copies of my novels (ebook and paperback) and Amazon have stated in 2016 that I was the 3rd bestselling indy author in the UK.
Having finally obtained mainstream publishing contracts for The Case of the MissingBoyfriend, The French House and The Half-Life of Hannah, and having been thoroughly disappointed by the experience, I returned to self publishing in 2014, a process I find to be far more profitable and above all much more fun than “mainstream” publishing. My new novel, Things We Never Said is currently in the UK top 20 on Amazon. I do hope you like it!
I was provided with a complimentary electronic advanced reader copy through Net Galley in exchange for my post. I was not required to post a positive review, but have chosen to do so because this book was great! Thank you!
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