Review: The Secret

The Secret by Kathryn Hughes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book starts with the agonising story of Beth and Michael whose young son Jake is suffering from renal failure and is in desperate need of a kidney transplant. As if that wasn't bad enough, throw into the mix the fact that Beth's Mum has died, and has taken a secret with her to the grave.

When Beth is going through her mother's things, she finds a newspaper cutting which holds the key to the secret.

Initially I thought this was a straight transplant-in-search-of-donor story and that was ok but I have to say that the first 88 pages took a little reading. Then the story went back in time to the 1976 heatwave in England, and then for me the story became really interesting and everything started to make sense and I rattled through the pages.

At the end there is a twist, which if I'm honest, made me feel like I'd been lead up the garden path throughout the whole story, but I suppose that's the thing about good twist, you never see it coming, but now I've finished the book, I was so grateful for the twist, and am so glad that's how the story ended.

This was my first Kathryn Hughes book, but it won't be my last and I recommend this lovely book.

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