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A review by felinity
The Secrets We Keep by Stephanie Butland
5.0
At first this seems straightforward enough: it's a story about a grieving widow trying to regain her footing in an unfamiliar world. That doesn't do it justice, though, because it captures the visceral pain of loss, the feeling that an entire side of you has been lost with them, the feeling that you'll never recover, leaving you almost as breathless and devastated as Elizabeth, grieving in a different way from her mother-in-law, trying to cope in a different way, each feeling that the other is somehow wrong, loved him less. There's the defining moment when she starts, consciously, to move on. And then you start getting hints that maybe, just maybe, there's something else there. Maybe appearances are deceptive, things weren't as they appeared.
[a:Stephanie Butland|5276201|Stephanie Butland|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s choice of the perfect tense for narration and first-person present tense for the letters makes it incredibly experiential, giving the writing a sense of immediacy as hurtful, devastating secrets are exposed with brutal honesty.
Elizabeth's letters to Mike describe the gut-wrenching grief and denial, and although she cannot see past her grief we can see how she is gradually adjusting, accepting her new reality. Step by step we journey with her, feeling the rawness her all-consuming grief until we can hardly bear it when life kicks her again. She wants to know how, she wants to know why, and yet these answers may never be hers.
I could identify very strongly with more than one character, and am proud to say I too have a Mell in my life, a fierce protector and sharer of memories.
But despite all this, it isn't a story of sadness. It's a story of hope. It's a story of suffering and making it through, of friends and family and rebuilding, and life.
Disclaimer: I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
[a:Stephanie Butland|5276201|Stephanie Butland|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s choice of the perfect tense for narration and first-person present tense for the letters makes it incredibly experiential, giving the writing a sense of immediacy as hurtful, devastating secrets are exposed with brutal honesty.
Elizabeth's letters to Mike describe the gut-wrenching grief and denial, and although she cannot see past her grief we can see how she is gradually adjusting, accepting her new reality. Step by step we journey with her, feeling the rawness her all-consuming grief until we can hardly bear it when life kicks her again. She wants to know how, she wants to know why, and yet these answers may never be hers.
I could identify very strongly with more than one character, and am proud to say I too have a Mell in my life, a fierce protector and sharer of memories.
But despite all this, it isn't a story of sadness. It's a story of hope. It's a story of suffering and making it through, of friends and family and rebuilding, and life.
Disclaimer: I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.