Because of You: The bestselling Richard & Judy book club pick

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Because Of You is a tale told with warmth by a storyteller who never takes herself too seriously Sunday Express Florence isn’t noticed as missing for some time with her parents asleep and the midwives leaving them to rest. When the news breaks the hospital presume Hope left way before Florence was taken and she isn’t a suspect. This is the 1st book from the WP Longlist that I didn't like at all. In fact, I am even wondering if I read the same book 🤔 While Dawn French's latest novel contains a dash of humour, it's also heart-wrenching The Hunsbury Handbook The ending requests you to suspend believe to the point that you could also read the Graffalo and believe that the mouse is real.

Because of You is a glorious, beautiful book. I knew what Hope had done was so wrong and on many levels evil, but I also couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Grief is a strange and difficult emotion to control and I can understand the want to hold a baby and love a child like the one she had lost. At the same time, she causes so much grief to the other family by taking their daughter.

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I listened to this as an audiobook and as it is narrated by the author herself, there is a real quality of diction and a good variety of voices and accents. It is entertaining and well produced and you can tell that she reads the text overall with warmth and a smile. The author is a compelling narrator and storyteller, she is after all quite a national treasure. The humor in all situations felt forced to me, the characters and their behaviors illogical and unrealistic especially for the situations they were in, also no character actually had real characteristics. I can’t even remember the names of them… i think the stillborn was called Minnie. That should tell you something, if i can only remember that name! It all felt a bit random and disconnected, jumping from one thing to the next. The time jumps in the book certainly didn’t help with that. A bright, brilliant and heartbreaking tale of two mothers, two babies and the far-reaching consequences of one fateful day Yahoo! Style This was an awful book. I found the beginning and the end very distressing, and most of the rest of it farcical and not funny. It’s a Marmite book: I’m really not sure it’s one you could be on the fence about.

Harrowing but uplifting . . . It is a book about mistakes, regret, forgiveness and unconditional love Daily Mirror There are way too many holes in the plot. How could someone commit a crime of this sort and get away with it so easily with an ongoing police investigation (the police inspector was another one dimensional character) is beyond me. Whatever happened to the stillborn baby that Hope & Isaac left at the hospital? . I felt very emotionally engaged by the opening section of this book but, as the story progressed, it came to feel increasingly melodramatic and sentimental so it turned into something like a soap opera. The characters' actions seemed more directed by the plot rather than feeling logical or real. In particular, I felt the character of Anna was thinly drawn and it was hard for me to believe she'd act so graciously given the circumstances. There are some funny and tender moments within the story but overall it felt a bit too forced for me to fully enjoy it or find it impactful. It's a bit unfair to react to French's writing in connection to her celebrity status. However, I feel like there are some well-known public figures such as Graham Norton who've written popular novels which are fine but they probably receive undue attention just because the authors are already known to the public. I probably wouldn't be so harsh criticising this novel if I weren't reading it in the context of a book prize because I think it's mostly enjoyable, but I don't think it's as impactful as the other books listed for this award.Dawn French said in her interview that she wanted to explore the themes of nature vs nurture and loss. Honestly, the very thought of hinging the exploration of nature vs nurture on a stolen baby and a stillbirth makes me uncomfortable as a parent. The exploration of loss felt no more than a lip service as it seemed like the author wanted to generate warm feelings for Hope in the readers' minds, so she conveniently chose to sideline the grief of Anna. Maybe it's me, but I fail to see why there should even be an expectation of warm feelings here for someone who committed the unimaginable crime of stealing a newborn, no matter what circumstances drove her to do it or how much effort she put into raising that baby. As a parent, this not only felt disturbing to me but it also felt offensive. a man’s girlfriend steals a baby from the hospital after her own baby dies. He accepts the child as his daughter. Criminal daddy the promptly leaves for Sierra Leone because he can’t lie to his daughter....even though him feeling a true, deep need be a father is the reason he doesn’t turn his girlfriend in.

The story begins on New Years Eve, on the cusp of a new millennium. Mothers-to-be Hope and Anna are in a London hospital giving birth however only one of them will leave with a baby.Heartbreaking but redemptive, and lightened by French's trademark humour, this is a compelling read that will keep you poised between laughter and tears Daily Mail I could see the charm in the writing that others have praised in the narrative – it is indeed warm and heartfelt but sadly it really didn’t work for me. The publicists have highlighted Russell Brand’s one word comment – “incredible” – to promote the book but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘incredible’ you will see that the word actually means “impossible to believe / difficult to believe. Extraordinary“. I am firmly in Russell’s camp. Both women are very different. Hope is 20 years old and a cleaner, however she is ambitious and has plans. Her boyfriend Quiet Isaac, is from Sierra Leone and an engineering student. with strong family values. Their baby was unexpected but nevertheless, much wanted. Oh my goodness. This was such an emotional read with a difficult subject at its heart but amongst the emotional turmoil there is humour too. Dawn French handles the story with warmth and somehow even though a wrong has been done, the leading female characters feel so credible that you really care about them. In fact they all have vivid personalities, including the minor characters. There are those like DI Thripshaw that provide the comedic and toe curling moments with his malapropisms and crassness whilst his colleague DC Debbie Cheese provides the empathy. The story then focusses mainly on the mother-daughter relationship as baby Minnie grows into womanhood and finds herself pregnant at 17. This is the trigger point when all secrets that have followed Minnie and mother around start to be revealed. The reader already knows much of the story, therefore there are no real surprises as such. It is the emotional fall-out that takes centre stage.

year old Anna is a quiet and resolute person, unhappily married to Julius, an MP and a more obnoxious man you could not meet. An adulturer, pompous and narcissistic. The only person he loves is himself. She really wants this baby to have someone to love. criminal mummy tells stolen daughter the truth at age 17. Why? Who knows. They then turn themselves in at the police station. Why? Who knows. Terrible. Dawn French is a talented comedian, but this book is dreadful and so unrealistic with so many errors. There seems to have been no research done on any of the themes. How did it get past the editor?Minnie is raised in a much lower social class than she was born into. The vocabulary of the incredibly immature Hope, and how she raises Minnie as her BFF, is really grating. But the build up of the relationship between Hope and 'her daughter' and the way the reveal was dealt with and how the daughter was reunited with her biological mother was acceptable. The warmth of the mother / daughter relationship (with both mothers) was there and true to the Dawn we think we know. I rather struggled with the, I suppose, rather simplistic response to a very serious event which then snowballed. When the big reveal comes there is of course upset, which then is made better by a cup of tea, together with the response from Minnie “Soz for the ugly things I said” in the heat of the moment. You would expect Minnie to be outraged and, well, beside herself, apoplectic, devastated and traumatised (at the very least) when the situation is laid bare and the “ugly things” expressed would be the least of their worries.