#BookReview ‘The River Home’ by Hannah Richell

About the book..

The river can take you home. But the river can also drag you under… The new novel from bestselling author Hannah Richell. A wise and emotionally powerful story of a broken family and the courage it takes to heal.

The river can take you home. But the river can also drag you under…

‘It’s something she learned years ago – the hard way – and that she knows she will never forget: even the sweetest fruit will fall and rot into the earth, eventually. No matter how deep you bury the pain, the bones of it will rise up to haunt you … like the echoes of a summer’s night, like the river flowing relentlessly on its course.’

Margot Sorrell didn’t want to go home. She had spent all her adult life trying not to look behind. But a text from her sister Lucy brought her back to Somerset. ‘I need you.’

As Margot, Lucy and their eldest sister, Eve, reunite in the house they grew up in beside the river, the secrets they keep from each other, and from themselves, refuse to stay hidden. A wedding brings them together but long-simmering resentments threaten to tear the family apart. No one could imagine the way this gathering would change them all forever. And through the sorrow they are forced to confront, there is a chance that healing will also come. But only if the truth is told.

Enormous thanks to Alainna at Orion Books for sending me this beautifully wrapped edition of ‘The River Home’ which is out now in hardcover.

This is an incredible book which , like the river of the title, reveals and conceals the secrets in the lives of the 3 Sorrell sisters-Eve, Lucy and Margot.

Brought back to Windfalls, their childhood home for a whirlwind wedding, the women are borught to the realisation that their memories and what actually happened there when they were younger has the power to disrupt and derail their futures, should they choose to let it.

Alternating with the preaprations for Lucy’s wedding and the past which creates the history of the whole family, both timelines meet in a collision which fractures and threatens to divide the family permanently. Margot, returning from her self imposed exile, parents Kit and Ted, one a frustrated author unable to finish her most famous series, the other a successful playwrite need to find the courage to face their pasts. Or they will never move on-but how do you find that strength when the place you love becomes the very thing that destroyed you?

A truly engaging and emotive novel with flawed and learning central characters, you, the reader, feel that you are going on this journey with them. Emotionally invested and keen to see how it resolves, the story winds like the river and carries you with it and you are happy to surrender to it’s flow. Kit, the mother who bought Windfalls as a retreat where she would raise children becomes a very different mother than the one she envisaged-wallowing in her inability to write, she blames one of her daughters instead of taking repsonsibility for her inaction. Ted, formerly the creative talent of their partnership, finds reconciling himself to second fiddle something he cannot bear and looks for solace elsewhere-the repercussions that this has on Margot, Eve and Lucy last for decades.

A story of quiet strength and determination anchored by Lucy’s personality, ‘The River Home’ is a very human story of growth, acceptance and freedom and I loved it. I remain truly grateful as this world enters a turbulent and strange ‘day-to-day’ existence for all the writers who keep at their craft, who keep making these wonderful tomes which transport us to another level of existence. For this I thank each and every one, all the publicists whose passion about books drives them and the publishers who release them. Now, I feel, we need this escapism more than ever.

About the author…

Hannah Richell was born in Kent, England and spent her childhood years in Buckinghamshire and Canada. After graduating from the University of Nottingham in 1998 she worked in book publishing and film. Hannah began to write while pregnant with her first child. The result was ‘Secrets Of Tides’, picked for the 2012 Richard & Judy Book Club, the Waterstones Book Club and shortlisted for the Australian Independent Bookseller Best Debut Fiction Award, ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year (2013) and ABIA Newcomer of the Year (2013). The novel has been translated into sixteen languages. Her follow-up novel was ‘The Shadow Year’ and her third, ‘The Peacock Summer’, was published in 2018.

Hannah has written for a number of media outlets including Harper’s Bazaar, The Independent, Fairfax Media and Australian Women’s Weekly. She is a dual citizen of the UK and Australia, though currently lives in the South West of England with her family.

Links-http://www.hannahrichell.com/

Twitter @hannahrichell @OrionBooks