Review: Sad Yet Lovely...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 21, 2013
No Child Of MineBySusan LewisMy "in a nutshell" summary...Alex is a social worker and sees a child...a quiet little girl...that she can not forget....that she does not forget...that she is incapable of forgetting.My thoughts after reading this book...Oh how I love novels with tons of amazingly mysterious circumstances within them.  This novel begins in just that way.  At first Alex's life seems deceptively uncomplicated...but that begins to not be the case as the pieces of her life are made clear.  She has had a nightmarish circumstance in her childhood and she still pays for it with horrible dreams.Her relationship with Jason...her older boyfriend...is complicated.  Her work is complicated and just gets even more complicated throughout this book.Alex is one of those social workers who cares about the children she deals with.  She puts them with good caregivers, she checks on them, she is brave.  When she encounters Ottilie...something sort of hits her...every part of her tells her that something is not right with this child.  Nor are things right with Ottilie's mother or her creepy father.  Through her persistence the secret perverse world that Ottilie's father created begins to crumble bit by bit.There are other aspects to this novel...Alex's own childhood and adoption, Alex's issues at work, her issues with Jason, her boyfriend...her feelings of never belonging and also the mystery of her own mother...she has no clue where she is or even if she is still living.What I loved about this book...I could not put this book down...I read well into the day and late into the night.  I loved this author's writing style...it was intense and addictive.  The story felt so sadly real.  Ottilie was the sweetest most innocent child and the thought of the horrors she lived through at the hands of her parents...was so sad.What I did not love...This was...at times...a difficult topic to read and then think about.  The suffering ofchildren...the pompousness of pedophiles...was very uncomfortable.  The games Ottilie's father played with her were so sadly for Ottilie...sick and evil...I despised him as I read.  It's not possible to read this book without feeling an attachment to these characters...other than Ottilie's own father and mother.Final thoughts...This was a beautiful book...in spite of the subject matter.  I could not stop reading it.  It is a story of families...sad ones who are lost and broken and without any hope at all until sometimes just a teeny bit of hope is able to work its way through by loving caregivers or even the kindness of strangers.Thankfully...the author has more to say...there will be a sequel to this book.I received my copy from the publisher via NetGalley via Amazon and then onto my lovely Kindle Paperwhite!