Review: After the Wedding by Laura Elliot

 

After the Wedding

by Laura Elliot

Publisher: Bookouture

Pages: 346

Format: eARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Everyone said she was the prettiest flower girl. But now her dress lies on the floor. It’s wet and torn, her shoes are lost. ‘Where did you go?’ her daddy asks. She shakes her head. All she can remember are the red rose petals scattering like drops of blood spilling to the ground.

When Christine Lewis was a little girl, she witnessed something terrible at a wedding and buried it so deep in her memory, she managed to forget it ever happened.

Jessica Newman was a baby when she and her father came to live in an isolated cottage on the Irish island of Cullain with Margaret – the woman who loved Jessica as if she was her own. Until the day Jessica and her father left, and she never saw Margaret again.

Years later, Christine and Jessica cross paths working at the advertising agency Christine runs with her husband. These two women are about to uncover the dark secrets of their own traumatic pasts. But they have no idea that they are connected.
The shocking truth of what happened at the wedding all those years ago, and what became of Margaret, is going to blow their lives apart in more ways than each of them could ever have imagined…

Kritters Thoughts:  A young flower girl is rescued and while this incident seems isolated, it will ripple and come back up and after a trip with a therapist, the memories will come back and Christine's life will be upended.  

This was such a fun read - it felt like two mysteries for the price as one as the clues from Christine's childhood are being revealed while the mystery of her and husband's advertising agency's demise.  Of course, since this has all sorts of clues and things in this book, I don't want to share too much and give anything away, but I have to say the way that this book unfolded was just genius.  

The characters in this book were built so well.  I both trusted them and questioned them at the same time!  I loved following Christine's pursuit for the truth and her wanting to find out the details as to what happened to her when she was young and to find out what all was going on around her that at a young age she would have never known.  

I was surprised to find out after finishing this book that I have a lot of Laura Elliot's books on my TBR, but this was the first one I have read.  With her pacing being on point and her characters having such depth, I am even more excited to read Laura Elliot's other books.  

Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Ebook 2022 Challenge: 20 out of 100

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Bookouture.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.