Quick Synopsis – As a teenager Ella is in love with Jude whose father greatly disagrees with the romance. When Jude’s father is seemingly poisoned, all fingers point at Ella. After spending years in prison, Ella is set free after a journalist proves her trail was mishandled and her confession coerced. Now that she’s free Ella wants to find her daughter. What follows is a sweeping tale of family and the mistakes we make.

Song This Reminds Me Of – What Kind of Man by Florence and The Machine

Release Date – April 23, 2024

Content Notes – This book contains scenes of police coercion, family abandonment, child abuse, marital abuse, death, blood, imprisonment, rape, and harassment.

Rating – 3 out of 5 stars ⭐

Review – This is not a feel-good story, but really a devastating story about the unique ways family can hurt you and love. Ella spends 6 years in prison for attempted murder, a crime she can’t remember committing. When she’s released, her mother, Helen, just wants her daughter back. Ella just wants to find the daughter she had to give up while imprisoned. What follows is a heartbreaking story of love and loss told between multiple points of view and timelines.

We jump between Ella, Helen, and sometimes Jude, as well as the past and present. Ella is still a felon, but she is free with no probation or parole since her conviction was overturned. She tries to find her daughter, but the adoption lawyer is no help, so she sneaks a peek at the lawyer’s computer and discovers her daughter is in Ann Arbor, MI. Once she finds a job and moves there, she stalks the family that adopted her daughter and eventually befriends the mom, Marianne. Meanwhile, Ella’s mom Helen is carving a life for herself in New York City and coping with the loss of the community she grew up in.

My favorite part of this book was that much of what Ella goes through is what a lot of incarcerated people go through. She is railroaded into a confession without an adult or attorney present. While incarcerated, she is coerced into giving up her child. When she does get out, there is almost no support, and she has a hard time finding a job. It’s clear that Ella would benefit from therapy, but there is hardly any mention of her needing help. It’s so tragic and real. Helen’s storyline is similarly heartbreaking; when she fell pregnant with Ella, her Hasidic Jewish community cast her out. The loss of her family and her faith has marked her ever since. Watching her mother unravel that trauma and start rebuilding so many years later was so touching.

Honestly, I could have done without Jude’s POV. Don’t get me wrong; he also dealt with tragedy, but he was written like my least favorite book characters. The plot just happened to him, and he didn’t really further the story along. Even after the horrific abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, he doesn’t cut him off. Instead, he allows his father to persist in his life for far too long. Also, he felt like he was the only character that got a hard happy ending, and that bothered me.

If you like slice-of-life stories, I think this would be for you. I liked the story, but it just wasn’t for me.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.