#Review – The Perfect Gift by Emma Hannigan (@MsEmmaHannigan) @HachetteIRE @headlinepg

Blurb.

Happy Birthday, darling girl…

Ever since she can remember, Roisin has received a birthday card in the post. Signed with love from the birth mother she has never met.

Brought up by her adoptive parents, Keeley and Doug, Roisin has wanted for nothing. But on her thirtieth birthday a letter comes that shakes her world.

For Keeley, who’s raised Roisin as her own, the letter reminds her of a secret she’s been holding for thirty years.

And for Nell, keeping watch in the lighthouse, the past is a place she rarely goes. Until a young runaway arrives seeking shelter, and unwraps the gift of hope for them all…

What does TWG think?

Wow, how the monkeys do I begin a review for this one?! I bought this book back in May based on the cover alone, and I was also lucky enough to get a paperback copy from the publisher (thank you). I didn’t read the blurb of the book until AFTER I had read it, and I am glad that I did it that way because knowing nothing about the book increased the power of emotion. Plus, I hadn’t read any other books of Emma’s so I wanted to find everything out for myself. Yes, I am daft, the cover is beautiful though!

I found ‘The Perfect Gift’ to be quite a complex read to start with as I was learning about the characters ‘now’, as well as the circumstances of the past. Luckily, I wasn’t too confused as the past and the present entwined beautifully and kept me on my toes throughout the whole book. When the storyline went back in time, so to speak, I kept trying to work out where it fit in with the present circumstances but I just couldn’t work it out! I was keeping my eye out for any ‘clues’, but just when I thought I had worked it all out, the storyline took another turn and I was back to square one. I’m not complaining at all as it made my curiosity soar and kept the book in my hands.

Emma Hannigan has cleverly, and carefully, entwined multiple lives and personal stories into one complete storyline; perfectly. Each and every character stood on their own two feet and I didn’t feel as though any of them got lost along the way. However, some of the characters pleased me more than others, ahem, that’s a nicer way of saying that I wasn’t overly keen on one or two attitudes. I do enjoy it when I find a character within a book that grates me as it makes the book even more interesting. I don’t want to read a book with every character being ‘nice’, so the variation in personalities was very welcome.

As I read further into the book, a lot of situations were starting to add up. Well, I thought they were, at one point ‘it’ was right under my nose but my lightbulb didn’t switch on. But oh my, oh my, oh my, my lightbulb did switch on eventually and I can definitely say that the light wasn’t a dim one! I sat on the edge of the sofa, head in my hands, sobbing my heart out at what I had read. The intense emotions that jumped out of the pages at me, took me by surprise. Such, wow, sorry, I’m tearing up now…

Being a mother myself, the storyline shook me to my core in a way that I hadn’t felt before. Not in a bad way I must add, but in an exceptionally, powerful and deep way. I am in awe of the way Emma wrote about such a sensitive situation with such feeling; I felt as though I was reading someone’s life story, not a book.

It was raw. It was emotional. It was intense. It was mind-blowing. It was utterly amazing. I cannot seem to find the right words to express how much ‘The Perfect Gift’ blew me away, but it truly did. Emma Hannigan has written such a heart-warming tale about love, loss and truth. Never mind the perfect gift for Roisin, this was ‘The Perfect Gift’ for me. Breathtakingly beautiful.

The Perfect Gift by Emma Hannigan is available to buy now from Amazon UK.