Book Review: Will You Remember Me by Amanda Prowse

Another book that leapt out at me from the shelves of a library. That also reminds me that I’ve not been to a library in the past three weeks. *gasps in shock at the realization* Not even my lunch time library run! I have been downloading e-books. I’ve become a convert, I have to say. While I still love regular books, the lure of marked down books is too difficult to ignore.

Poppy Day is a 32 year old young woman. Mother to two adorable children, wife to Mart, an army man and her childhood sweetheart. Mart is just back after tour with the army, safe, and is considering packing in his army career which takes him away so much from his family. For Poppy, nothing can be happier news than knowing that her husband might be with them all the time, even if it means that she would have to forgo some of the things she currently takes for granted, like the house she is so proud of. Nothing can match having her partner, her husband with her and not having him go away on dangerous missions to all sorts of unstable parts of the world.

Busy with her children and her regular life, Poppy almost misses a lump in her breast. And unfortunately for her, it turns out to be cancer. Poppy Day knows that she has to fight it and fight it hard, she can’t let cancer take her away from her family, the family she has fought so hard for, the life she has fought so hard for. Poppy has come a long way from her origins in the East End of London, and she isn’t about to let cancer take it all away.

It is such a heart wrenching story, a young woman, at the prime of her life faced with the possibility of dying before her time, way before her time. The way the story is narrated, is both sweet and sad at the same time. It is a book that could move you to tears, and as a mother with a young child myself, I could almost place myself in her place and imagine what she must be going through. The possibility of your children never knowing you, of growing up without their mother, of not having their mother with them at the most crucial time of their lives.. Poppy had grown up with a mother who did little for her daughter. She always tried hard to be the sort of mother she always wanted for herself, and facing the possibility that she might not, is such a cruel, cruel fate.

A heart wrenching story, but a story well worth the read. I loved the way the author brought out so many emotions, Poppy’s own situation, Mart’s frustration at not being able to do anything to help his wife, the children and their ways of dealing with what they understood of the situation.. A beautifully written book. This book was apparently a sequel to another book, which I hadn’t read but this doesn’t hamper the storyline in anyway. It is just that readers who had read the previous book might connect and empathise with Poppy and Mart even more, but it certainly didn’t detract from this book, for me. There were some elements of the book that didn’t work for me, which I can’t really go into without revealing too much of the book, making it 3.5/5 book for me. Otherwise it could have easily been a 4.5/5 book.

About the author
Amanda Prowse was a management consultant for ten years before realising that she was born to write. When her family isn’t being uprooted by the army, Amanda lives blissfully in the West Country with her soldier husband and their two teenage sons.

This book is available from Amazon(UK).