Book Review: The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell

In a hospice in Bury St Edmunds, a man called Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sits with him every day; she holds his hand and she listens to the story of his life, to his regrets and to his secrets. And then he tells her about the children he has never met and never will, conceived with women he never even touched. Four of them, apparently, two boys, two girls. His legacy, he calls them.

Lydia, Robyn and Dean don’t know each other. Yet. And they are all facing difficult challenges. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood and although she is wealthy and successful, her life is lonely and disjointed. Dean is a young man whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is training to be a doctor, just like her father – a man she’s never met. When she falls in love with a man who is like her in every way, she needs to be sure. It's time for her to open the envelope her mother gave her on her eighteenth birthday.

And Daniel’s children slowly find their way into each other’s lives…

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I’m sure that most of you remember my terrific excitement last year when I was invited to a blogging event at Random House and I actually got to meet Lisa. At the time she said that she was looking to move into writing darker characters and to maybe take her writing in a different direction and I have to say that she has done 

and this is definitely my favourite book of hers. She should write all future books in a similar style.

I can’t tell you how quickly I read this book....well actually I can.....it took me four and a half hours! I just couldn’t put it down. Now because I had a preview copy it didn’t have a normal cover and so I didn’t read the blurb above before I got stuck into it and for the first few chapters didn’t see where the book was going! (In my defence I read most of it laying on a blanket in the park in the glorious sunshine and didn’t have the info sheet with me J

The characters have so much depth and the story just races along leaving you eager to read the next chapter to find out how it will all end. I found also that it threw up some really interesting questions about the circumstances surrounded the conception of the four and what this would mean in a real life situation. There was a twist that I didn’t see coming which kept me on my toes and I love that the book shows how 

dysfunctional all families are even when they look normal from the outside!

The book is released on the 12^th May and I suggest you pre-order your copy now......I can’t recommend it highly enough and am now going to thoroughly read it for the second time to see what I missed out on whilst I was speed-reading through it!!


If you are a fan of Lisa's you can find her on Facebook too :-)