So, we’re finally coming to the end of what I’m sure you will agree has felt like the longest month in history. Yes, January has lasted approximately 117 days as usual and proved to be a pretty busy and exciting month overall! So, the 2020 reading challenge has begun, this month’s read, I’ll admit, was a bit last-minute! I did start it at the beginning of the month but I was super busy so I didn’t really get around to reading the majority of the book until just last week. I recently took my first solo trip to London for work and the train journey there and back gave me the perfect opportunity to devour this month’s read! Let’s see what I thought of my first book of 2020…
My Everything – Katie Marsh
Genre: Romance, Contemporary Fiction
Blurb
On the day Hannah is finally going to tell her husband she’s leaving him, he has a stroke . . . and life changes in an instant.
Tom’s only 32. Now he can’t walk or cut up his own food, let alone use his phone or take her in his arms. And Hannah’s trapped. She knows she has to care for her husband, the very same man she was ready to walk away from.
But with the time and fresh perspective he’s been given, Tom re-evaluates his life and becomes determined to save his marriage. Can he once again become the man his wife fell in love with or has he left it too late?
This one had been on my ‘to be read’ pile for such a long time (unsurprisingly, my TBR pile is ridiculously large) so I decided it was finally time to crack on and get reading! I loved the premise for this story and upon reading the blurb, I couldn’t wait to see how the story played out! At first, I thought Hannah’s reasoning for wanting to leave Tom was completely understandable but the more I read, the more I couldn’t help but think she was overreacting a bit? I also thought she was a little contradictory in whether she wanted to be with him or not? One minute, she was in love with him and never wanting to leave his side, the next, she was daydreaming about another man and being elsewhere away from Tom. Bit confusing but it got there in the end!
I saw a lot of similarities between myself and Hannah, she’s a bit of a dreamer, looking for adventure and something more exciting than her teaching job which she’s quickly growing tired of. I’m familiar with that feeling of being stuck and feeling like you’re not getting anywhere in life and want to do something more fulfilling (pretty much feel it on the daily, ngl) I always think a book is much easier to read when you can find common ground with the characters so that really made this book a delight to read. For me personally, it was quite an emotional read thanks to the story line and the fact that the emotions that the characters are feeling are so familiar and well-written. I felt on the edge of tears quite a lot throughout, I love when writing is just so good that it really makes you feel the way the characters are feeling, that’s when you know you’ve read a good one!
There are only a few things I disliked about the book I thought the ending could have been better, that’s not to say it was bad, I just think there could have been more depth into how the last year developed both characters and how they progressed over that time. The other thing I found hard to follow were the chapter titles/numbers, from what I could gather, in the early stages of the book, the numbered chapters were present-day and the chapters with titles were telling a story from Hannah and Tom’s past, however, by the end of the book, all the chapters were present day? I’m not sure if it was intentional or not but it did get a little hard to follow at one point.
Other than those two little niggles, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it very difficult to put down once I got stuck into it. I managed to read this one in 6 hours (totalled over 2 train journeys!) which makes it easily readable in just one day – perfect for a cosy Sunday on the sofa!
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall, a great start to my 2020 Reading Challenge and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year’s literary adventures brings!
1 Comment. Leave new
Sounds like a good one, I may have to borrow xxx