Book Review: Away From You by Kay Langdale

Title: Away From You 

Author: Kay Langdale

Publisher: Hodder Books

Availability: Paperback can be PRE-ORDERED for £7.99 (due for publication 12th February 2015) 

also available in Hardback and Kindle 

A Page of Love Rating: 




Book Description: 

The heartbreaking novel from the author of CHOOSE ME, about the sacrifices parents must make and the anguish that can befall them.

When Monica is offered a three-month placement in LA, she knows that for the sake of her career she must accept it - even though it means leaving behind nine-year-old Ruby, toddler Luca and her husband Daniel.

She hires Ursula as a housekeeper and nanny during her absence, although the older woman is oddly reluctant to agree to a childcare position. What is the dark secret in Ursula's past, which has left her so closed-off and reserved? Will her growing attachment to Ruby bring it to the surface? And will Monica regret leaving the children in her care?

Dawn's Thoughts: 

When I first picked this book up, I initially only meant to simply flick through it to get a gist of chapter lengths, text size and to smell that wonderful scent of a freshly printed paperback. However, two days later and I was wiping tears from my eyes, with my heart just breaking un-apologetically for Ursula. 

This book is superbly written and I have read no other book in it's league. Sure I've read heart breaking novels, tearjerkers, and soul smiling titles that have longed stayed with me after putting them back on the shelf, but what Kay has created here is simply a psychological masterpiece. 

The entire story had me unaware of what was hiding so darkly, deeply and painfully in Ursula's past, but when the truth came out, as it so often does in life, my heart shattered into a million pieces for her, sitting here writing this review, it is choking me up in the pit of my stomach as I recall the emotions I felt as I read the intricate details of not only what occurred but the emotions experienced by Ursula and the other characters. I simply cannot comprehend what was going through Ursula's mind and heart as her life unfolded, but Kay has carefully divulged and weaved together the closest humanely possible for us to ever experience what that must be like without ever experiencing it ourselves. 

I usually divulge certain aspects of the novel with you my readers, but this time I simply cannot, because Away from You, is not a novel that enables me to do that. I can only encourage you to pick up the book, sit down, and allow yourself to experience it, I say experience it because you simply cannot just 'read' this. it is not just a book with woven pages printed with words and a 'story'. It is so much more than that, so much more than words can ever possibly begin to describe, and I urge you, to experience it in its fullness and allow yourself to become immersed and emotional with it. Please, 'read' this and then pass it along, because it is highly worthy of such an act of love. 

Like a memory of a lost loved one, this book will stay with me forever. Without a doubt, Ursula's story will be a part of me until the day I am no more than a memory to someone, a face on a photograph, and a name written on a family tree.