I’m delighted to be able to share my review of Everything Happens For A Reason as part of the blog tour. It’s written with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on the tour and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

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. 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 six-year-old daughter, Josephine, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results….

Review:

I’ve wanted to read Everything Happens For A Reason since it first came on to my radar several months ago. I am delighted to say it was absolutely worth waiting for. Katie Allen’s writing is beautiful and she has a brilliant use of words which allowed me to feel a whole range of emotions and really connect with the story that is told. 

Everything Happens For A Reason takes the form of emails, which Rachel writes to her stillborn son. This is obviously a sensitive subject and at times it is heartbreaking to read. Allen writes in her acknowledgements that Rachel’s story is loosely based on her own and this makes Rachel’s feelings more authentic. She writes with such compassion about a subject which is rarely discussed and she has done so in an innovative way. I really admire her for this. 

Although the novel is written as emails, we still get some valuable insight into Rachel’s personality and the characters of the people around her. I loved the dark humour that is sprinkled through the emails and her descriptions of her family that made me want to go inside the book and shout at them! I can’t write this review without mentioning Lola and Josephine, whose vibrancy made me smile in every scene. 

There are some interesting twists and turns as the novel reaches its conclusion and a few moments of tension that surprised me. I will remember this novel and these characters for some time after today. 

Everything Happens For A Reason is available from Amazon.

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