So much potential but it kept focusing on plot points that I didn't care for. Ultimately, a 'meh' from me.
Summary:
On a snowy night, Dr. David Henry delivers his firstborn, a healthy baby boy named Paul, but is surprised to find that his wife is carrying twins and that the second baby is a girl with Down Syndrome. Wanting to save his wife Nora the heartbreak, David hands the baby off to the nurse to take to a home and tells Nora that her daughter Phoebe died at birth. But nurse Caroline Gill makes her own unexpected choice and disappears to raise Phoebe as her own. All of the characters are impacted by the choices of that night, whether they know about them or not, and the family secret threatens to destroy all and save them at the same time.
Verdict: 4/10
It's really a great premise. The first couple chapters completely sucked me in. Edwards weaves flashbacks together to reveal a whole picture of one's life in a single chapter, complete with history, personality, backstory, etc., without ever feeling abrupt. I was caught up in the drama and the characters and the impossible situation they were digging themselves into... but then everything plateaued.
It was interested to see the unintended consequences of David's actions and how the entire family's lives were altered. But a misunderstood and depressed housewife in the 60s isn't new. Distance causing an affair-filled marriage has been done before. A teen who wants to pursue music but his father wants him to follow in his footsteps and become a doctor - that's one of the biggest cliches possible.
The thing that set this book apart was Phoebe's Down Syndrome. That's the storyline I wanted more of: Caroline's struggles to make a life beyond Phoebe's disability in a time when the world wasn't accepting of such challenges. We got glimpses of that throughout, but I wanted more.
Usually a book has a great middle and then a disappointing ending. Yet this one was a great start, a bland middle, and a disappointing end. The majority of the book was predictable plot lines that I didn't care about. And what should have been the climatic reveal was wrapped up in the last 25 pages!
Edwards spent her 400 page novel focusing on the in-between instead of highlighting the beginning and end. The author could have made the book stand out more by making different distinguishing plot decisions. When David was mentioning memory lapses, I thought “ooooo it’d be a cool twist if he gets Alzheimer’s before he can reveal the secret to Nora or Paul." But then (SPOILER ALERT) Edwards abruptly kills him off in the next chapter of a heart attack? There’s no lead up. And again I kept waiting for Rosemary to say something or for Nora to stumble across Phoebe’s photo in David's stuff. Instead we get Caroline, who never talked about going back until she shows up at Nora's house. Again it just felt out of character and out of place. (SPOILER CLEAR)
There was so much more to explore at the end that was left unanswered (the family's reactions to each other and how to move forward, Phoebe's future relationship with Robert, Caroline and Al's future). It's so frustrating! I feel like I just got the back cover of the novel slammed in my face.
Time jumps also got old after a while. Edwards kept the story moving with enough reminders so that the reader didn't get lost, but she repeated EVERYTHING. To the point that she was using the same language every 20 pages. If I read “the secret had taken root and blossomed in the center of their family," I was going to through my book out the window. Or how many times she wrote "that snowy night."
Enough is enough. This book could have been half the length if it weren't dwelling on events that have already been covered. The writing was trying to be artsy. The language and imagery was fine. It just felt like Edwards was trying to hard.
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