Today I’m joining the blog tour for The Day I Lost You. My review is written with thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

‘I need to report a crime. My baby has been stolen.’

All Lauren wants is a new life in Spain. She’s suffered an unimaginable loss, but at last she has found a home in the pretty seaside town of Mantilla de Mar. Everyone deserves a new start, and Lauren needs to put her past firmly behind her.

Hope has everything: an interesting career as a therapist, an attractive husband, a dream home in the countryside – and, finally, the baby she always longed for. Sam. Her beautiful boy.

But Sam has gone missing.

So when the police tell her that a woman has been found in Spain with a child matching Sam’s description, Hope thinks that her nightmare might be coming to an end.

But Lauren is insisting Sam is her baby. She even has his passport and birth certificate to prove it.

So what really happened to Baby Sam? And who still has secrets to hide?

One child. Two mothers. And a past that won’t let them go.

Review:

I enjoyed reading The Woman On The Ledge last year, and was pleased to have the opportunity to read and review The Day I Lost You. Once again, Ruth Mancini has shown that she is a fabulous writer, and her latest novel is incredibly fast paced and twisty, full of unreliable characters and secrets and lies. I read it in one day and I didn’t want to stop reading until the end.

The Day I Lost You is written from the perspectives of all the central characters. This is a great technique, as most of them are unreliable (for a variety of reasons) and this made me question everything! It goes back and forth in time. I will admit that it took me a while to get my head around the time structure, but it was very effective in building the tension and intrigue. Ruth Mancini is brilliant at leaving crumbs of information and allowing the reader to try and fill in the gaps. I really wanted to know what had happened and I was often wrong!

I’m not sure which characters Ruth Mancini wants us to feel sympathy for, but my sympathy lay with Lauren throughout most of the story. Although she was unreliable and often did things that came across as a little creepy, she was clearly unwell and this influenced her behaviour. In contrast, I found Hope slightly cold and it was difficult for me to warm to her.

The novel is brilliantly plotted and although I wasn’t always sure in which direction the story was going, I absolutely loved the ride!

Ruth Mancini is definitely an author I will keep looking out for!

The Day I Lost You is available from Amazon.

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