Don't miss the brand-new six-part series from the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author Dilly Court!

Magical realism is usually my jam, but I found these elements this time around to be forced and, well, kind of annoying. I was unable to suspend my disbelief enough for some of the more far-fetched devices, and instead of relating to the characters and pulling for them I found myself rolling my eyes and speed reading. Also, I have a real issue when people in relationships ice out their partner, it's just a button with me, so as Lila tries to face her demons alone, I just wanted to shake her. Tell your super nice and understanding husband!!! Also, watching Rae wallow in a bad relationship made me very tired, another button with me. This book had several moments where i connected with it very deeply and other moments where I felt very disconnected. It almost felt like reading a different book at times. Piers says he wants to help pay off the family’s debts. But how can Rosalind be sure he isn’t out to take what is his and leave them all homeless? Only a closely guarded secret will convince Rosalind she can trust Piers to protect her family - and her fragile heart. And the end, while gorgeous in language did not displease me. I was not quite convinced. Instead I wondered what sort of mess her personal life was in that she chose this trajectory.Written by Alice Hoffman, this is the story of two women: Rae and Lila. Rae Perry is a defiant teenager from a well-off Newton, Massachusetts home with a mostly-absent, career-obsessed father and a mother who is trying her best but not succeeding. Rae is madly, hopelessly in love with Jessup, four years her senior and the quintessential bad boy. They run away before Rae finishes high school and after five states in seven years, they end up in Southern California. And it is here that Rae's life forever changes—with or without Jessup. Meanwhile, 40-something Lila Grey is happily married to Richard, but she harbors deep-seated secrets about her past, secrets she vows Richard will never know. Because if he ever found out what she had done when she was 18, he couldn't possibly love her. But when Lila, who dabbles in fortune-telling, meets Rae, those secrets erupt inside Lila's soul and their fire will not be tamed. Second, the characters all carry pain, even the "bad boy" with the "good girl." And no one is that one-dimensional. The "good" girl is not always good. The "bad" boy is not always bad. And the attempts to connect and reconnect, even when they don't want to, show their desire to overcome the pain of the past and move into a more functional future. The fortune teller who overcomes all her own impulses to the contrary to make herself available to a single girl facing childbirth alone is an excellent example of this. This is an imaginative and beautifully written twist on the age-old story of mothers and daughters, the love and the distrust, the hope and the sorrows.

To me the characters were like something out of a Jane Eyre or Daphne Du Maurier novel, and I could often see myself imagining Judy Dench as Lady Pentelow, and Keira Knightly as Rosalind…the jury is still out in my mind as to who would play Piers! Of course, it's not enough. It's a bad relationship -- kind of like any of us have had in the month before a breakup, except that this is how they have lived for 7 years. She feels uncertain about Jessup and afraid he will leave her. She is totally dependent on him emotionally. He shows her nothing but contempt. Anyway, Rae is struggling and she goes to a tea leaf reader nearby named Lila. We then learn about Lila's life, which parallels Rae's. Lila also moved from the NYC area to Los Angeles with a man, and that man is pretty much all of her life. However, they have a loving relationship that's deeply supportive even after 20 years. He's built them stability through opened an auto repair shop. The problem is that Lila has a secret she never told her husband, and it's been eating her alive for decades: the secret is that she had a baby girl at age 17 or so, and was forced to give her up for adoption. Piers says he wants to help pay off the family's debts. But how can Rosalind be sure he isn't out to take what is his and leave them all homeless? Only a closely-guarded secret will convince Rosalind she can trust Piers to protect her family - and her fragile heart. The story primarily follows the life of Rae, a young woman who hooked up with a "bad boy" older guy while she was in high school, stole money from her mother, and fled home. She and the guy, Jessup, are on the road about 7 years later, still moving from town to town when he gets tired of doing a dead-end job in one place or another. He's mean to her but not violent. More like belittling and cruel, and with a threat of violence. She loves him, though it's not really clear why she would, except that it's a childhood infatuation that she never had a chance to outgrow because he is her entire life.

Success!

The story starts with Rae and Jessup in the Los Angeles area. He's doing odd jobs for a film studio and claiming he wants to become a producer, which Rae knows will never happen, but is afraid to confront him about. She's working as an assistant for a kind man who's a distributor of art-house films. On the surface, all is okay in the sense that they're making their rent, they go to the beach on Sundays, and they have a life. Leila and Rachel meet, when Rachel gets her tea leaves read at a local shop. Two women who seemly are so different (one is younger, the other middle aged. One has a terrible boyfriend, the other a loving husband.), find that they have much in common in the way of searching for fulfillment. A compelling story of broken people who find their lives intertwined in unexpected ways. It may not be her best book, but it's still an interesting story with characters who you sometimes want to hate, but over the course of the book, you really start to care about them. In particular if you have ever had to deal with anxiety, this book will really strike a chord. It's also refreshingly realistic and candid about the difficulties that go with pregnancy and birth. Writing-wise, the perspective meanders, but never too far off course. Hoffman's later work is much more honed in this respect, but this book has an emotional rawness that some of her later books are missing. Two women's lives collide. Rae followed her boyfriend to California. After he leaves her, she discovers she is pregnant. The only person she can confide in is a psychic. She does not know that the psychic, Lila, has forged a similar path. She does not want Rae to look to her for help, as it opens up wounds in her past that have never entirely healed. Despite the title, this is as much a story about mothers as it is about daughters. It is a story about the heartbreak of mothering and the loss of daughters. And then those daughters become mothers. The circle continues.