Originally published: 25 Sep 2018

Author: Amanda Prowse

Published by: Lake Union

Genre: Family Drama

Length 330 pages

Reading dates: 28-30 September 2018

Star Rating: 4/5

When Rachel Croft wakes up on her family’s yacht in Bermuda the day is perfect and she is blissfully happy. But when she goes to wake her 7 year old son Oscar, he is missing and her world falls apart.

With Oscar missing, presumed dead, Rachel and her husband James struggle to live with their grief and guilt that they could have stopped the tragedy unfolding. James wants them to face their grief together but Rachel is unable to be with James, blaming him for buying the yacht and becoming engulfed by her grief. After several weeks, when she is in serious danger of loosing it completely, Rachel leaves Bermuda for her home town of Bristol, leaving James behind.

Once back in Bristol, she starts receiving letters from Cee-Cee, her housekeeper in Bermuda and gradually the tales of her life, the tragedy she suffered and how she came to terms with it, give Rachel the strength she needs to start slowly rebuilding her life.

When I read the blurb on the back cover, I wondered how the plot could fill a whole book. But Amanda Prowse has a real gift for writing characters and I could feel the pain that Rachel and James felt so clearly, almost as if it was my own. Every parent has surely felt that moment of fear when a child is out of sight – imagine how that would feel if that child had disappeared forever. The journey of Rachel’s grief isn’t rushed and I felt it to be very realistic. And her relationship with James, the brutal honesty between the couple of heart-breaking. Although mostly from Rachel’s point of view, we also hear from Cee-Cee who also loved Oscar dearly. Letters to Rachel tell us of her past, and I could just imagine her growing up on the small island of Bermuda, where everyone knows each others business.

A very emotional, well paced book and I’ll certainly be looking to read more by this author in the future.

Many thanks to EDpr and Lake Union/Amazon Publishing for a copy of the book and for inviting me to be part of the blog tour. The Coordinates of Loss by Amanda Prowse is out now, published by Lake Union and available to purchase here: http://amzn.eu/d/9RDjJIT

About the author:

Amanda Prowse was a management consultant for ten years before realising that she was born to write. Amanda lives in the West Country with her husband and their two teenage sons. She has written 21 novels since she was first published in 2012 (4 in 2018!)

Website: http://www.amandaprowse.org
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MrsAmandaProwse