This book had a surprising twist at the beginning of the story! Reading the jacket cover synopsis does not prepare you for the actual storyline. I actually re-read the synopsis to see if I had misinterpreted what the story was about. Nope. It's just cleverly written to not give anything away. I will try not to give too much away in my review either, but you probably shouldn't read this if you haven't read the book yet.
The narrator is Honor. Her father, deceased, was English and her mother is French, so she is bilingual. Honor, her husband Tom, and their daughter, Chloe, spend every Christmas in France, but they live in England. Honor is not close to her mother, who lives in France, and rarely sees her. Honor & Tom have some super close friends at home, Lauren (divorced) and Annie & Oliver, who are more like their family. The story starts at Christmas in France. Honor & Tom are struggling a bit in their marriage because Honor is obssessed with having a second child after suffering 5 miscarriages. Tom appears to be "over it". And even if he isn't permanently over it, he truely wants to spend Christmas with their daughter NOT talking about it. Honor can just not let it go. They had finally decided to use a surrogate, as well as an egg donor. The implantation had already occurred but they didn't know if it was successful yet. Honor wants to contact the surrogate (Jess) to see if she would take an early pregnancy test (7 days earlier than recommended), but Tom really puts his foot down.
The name of the egg donor is Grace. She requested that her name be forever confidential. It was considered a "closed" donation. Honor chose her specifically for Grace's profile and they referred to their egg donor as "Dunkirk". They knew she lived in Italy and what she looked like, but that's about it. One day a letter arrives, addressed to Tom. He opens it, but realizes it was sent to him by mistake. It was supposed to be sent to Grace, their egg donor. So now he knows the name of their egg donor who wanted to not ever be known. Now the moral dilema of the book. Should Grace be informed that her confidential identity has been revealed?
This sets up the rest of the book as a wild ride for sure! At one point (maybe two) I had to put the book down briefly to "re-group" because the consequences of Tom's actions were difficult to stomach. One thing leads to another, etc. I definitely enjoyed the book, but sometimes it was like watching a train wreck!
Wendy's Rating: ****
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