Review: Touching and heart wrenching
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 26, 2014
A very realistic and poignant story that will touch your heart if you let it.  I see that some reviewers are not satisfied that what happened to Sarah when she was 14 years old should still be affecting her life so deeply 15 years later.  But we must try to think about how fragile a 14 year old can be.  And when they lose so much, and in such a dramatic way, it will be enough to scar her for life.  She had lost her father, and then turned against her mother, who was hiding in a bottle of booze.  Her step father obviously didn't know how to deal with a teenaged girl, and just his presence was a constant reminder to Sarah of the father she had lost.  These things alone had her in a fragile state, but two more events, one more dramatic than the other, crushed her.  I will not discuss those events, because each reader needs to allow the story unfold as the author intended.  You should share Adam's frustration and confusion at her rejection of his marriage proposal.  And you should walk in the rain with Sarah, who is finally having to face what had happened, and trying to find a way to work through it.I was not distracted by editing issues, but some of the UK slang and idioms were new to me.  I could generally figure them out just from the context of use though.  The switching between Adam's narration, and then Sarah's, in addition to 'now' events vs. 14 years ago got to be a little awkward, and sometimes it wasn't immediately obvious who was relating the chapter, and during what time frame.  That should have been better defined.  The book is not overly long by page number count, but action is slow, and it did seem to bog down a bit at times.  Although the author did release some of the details gradually throughout the book, to hold your interest, and saving the major event for the end.