#BlogTour ‘Hope Nicely’s Lessons For Life’ by Caroline Day

About the book…

‘I don’t have any friends, only dog ones, because they don’t make you do bad things. I don’t want any human friends, actually. It’s for the best.’

Hope Nicely hasn’t had an easy life.

But she’s happy enough living at 23 Station Close with her mum, Jenny Nicely, and she loves her job, walking other people’s dogs. She’s a bit different, but as Jenny always tells her, she’s a rainbow person, a special drop of light.

It’s just…there’s something she needs to know. Why did her birth mother abandon her in a cardboard box on a church step twenty-five years ago? And did she know that drinking while pregnant could lead to Hope being born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder?

In a bid to find her birth mother and the answers to these questions, Hope decides to write her autobiography. Despite having been bullied throughout school, Hope bravely joins an evening class where she will not only learn the lessons of writing (including the number one golden rule of ‘show don’t tell’), but may also begin to discover more about the world around her, about herself and even make some (human) friends.

But when Jenny suddenly falls ill, Hope realises there are many more lessons to come…

Hope Nicely’s Lessons for Life is a heart-warming, coming-of-age novel about loneliness, friendship, acceptance and, above all, hope.

ENORMOUS thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Zaffre Books for my gifted review copy,and blogtour invite for ‘Hope Nicely’s Lessons For Life’ which is out now in hardcover, e-book and audiobook formats.

I am so excited to be able to shout so loudly about this incredible novel. It is one of those rare, and very lucky, occurrences where the right book falls in your lap at the moment that you need it most.

It would be so easy to say it is heartbreaking, heartwarming, and leaves you with a tangible improvement on your outlook on life, but Hope Nicely is so much more than that. From her very name she exudes a positivity, in spite of being made to feel unwelcome her entire life (from baby abandonment to bullying, she has been forever made to be an outsider) and instead, centers her relationships around dogs and her adoptive mother, Jenny.

Who could blame her for preferring the company of canines to people when they behave so despicably, let you down without explanation, and are constantly fickle?

Hope does not define herself by the things that she is not, she looks at the things that she is, and how she communicates to the rest of the world.Her need to seek out her birth mother is not to serve a sense of vengeance, she just wants, as most of us do, to understand. Why did she feel the need to abandon her? And as Hope has Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, she wants to know why, in the face of mass public campaigns and diagnostic testing, her mother carried on drinking. It is not known what exact amount causes this to take place, however, it is irreversible so the best evidence advises women not to drink at all.

However, the value of a life is not dependant on the sympathy of others for things outside of your control, and Hope seems to have her life nailed. She has a philosophy which many of us could do worse than take a leaf from, and when events in her life look like they will be leaving her dependant on her will to keep going, she and Jenny need to establish some rules for Hope. And this includes the ability to let other people into her life, as there are people out there worthy of her time and effort.

This book not only gives us hope, it gives us Hope, a truly unforgettable, one of a kind person who challenges the worth which people place on a neurodivergent life. She is a beacon of light, with a hilarious turn of phrase and personality which leaps off the page, her voice is so authentic and entirely her own from page one.I defy any reader not to fall in love with Hope and to champion her on her voyage of discovery!

About the author…

Caroline Day is a freelance journalist and consultant editor, living in Crouch End, married with kids and two dogs. She is an alumnus of the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course.

Twitter @Snoopytodd @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n

Links-https://www.compulsivereaders.com/