Because of You I Am by Sandy Hogarth

☆☆☆☆☆
ebook, 242 pages
Expected publication: April 23rd 2020 by Troubador Publishing Ltd. - Matador
About the Book:
When Alice was ten, she shot rabbits with her father. Thirty five years later, she’s after bigger prey. Life hasn’t been kind to Alice. Abandoned by her father at fourteen, she ran away two years later to 60s London, embracing all the darkness it had to offer when hopes of finding her father are lost. But that was the past and at thirty-seven she meets and marries Jake. They have a son, Adam, and life is perfection. But when he is killed in an accident six years later, her entire life comes crashing down. Buried under the weight of grief and guilt, Alice sets out on a path for revenge on the mother who killed her child. Teetering on the brink of sanity, she refuses to acknowledge the truth: what really happened on the way through the park on the day Adam died? The dominoes fall, sending Alice into dark places. Does forgiveness wait for her on the other side or will she never find her way back to the light?

I wanted to run to the door, place my hands around her throat and strangle her, watch her face turn red, then purple, stop her breath.

Oh my gosh! This book. Sandy Hogarth is a poet and has such a way with words. I really wouldn't call this book a thriller and although I was expecting one what I got was so, so much more. What an absolutely gutting (in a good way) book. The impact of people on one another, the way we carry our baggage from place to place adding more with every relationship like the worst possible souvenirs, how we fail to communicate who we are and what we want, how we don’t know those things because we don’t always know ourselves, how we can become redeemed in the love and loving of another person. I’m not sure I’ve felt more seen by a book. It somehow had the emotional resonance of every intimate conversation I’ve ever had and my entire body hummed with the familiarity and anxiety of those moments while reading it. I couldn’t put it down.

Thank you NetGalley, Troubador Publishing Ltd. - Matador and the very talented Sandy Hogarth for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#BecauseofYouIAm #NetGalley