Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong. Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss.
When a misguided well-wisher tells her that "everything happens for a reason", she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she'd stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she's now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son.
Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola's seven-year-old daughter, Josephine, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results... Both a heart-wrenchingly poignant portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman's determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life- affirming read and, quite simply, unforgettable.
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I know what's going to happen.
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(@Orendabooks, 10 April 2021, 298 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 14 June 2021)
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This is a new author for me. Everything Happens For A Reason broke my heart yet filled me with love, life and hope as well. I thought this was an incredible piece of writing. I loved the structure the book took; emails Rachel sends to an email account she set up for stillborn son as if she's talking to him. The emails start off quite innocent, contemplating what size and shape Luke might be if he'd lived but gradually became an outpouring of grief, loss, rage at the world for expecting her to have gotten over Luke's death by now and hope when she starts to use Ben, the man she saved as a catalyst for her recovery with unexpected consequences. I cried so much reading this but hugged my kindle a lot. This is an amazing book. It ignited all my feels.