Because of You: The beautifully uplifting Richard & Judy bestseller

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I read this book due to its surprise (to me) longlisting for the 2021 Women’s Prize – an explicit sign from the judges (the chair of whom blurbs the front cover of the book) that they were looking for a range of books from literary to storytellers.

An uplifting story about mothers and daughters and familial relationships, in which two very different women give birth to two very similar daughters on the same night Woman & Home Terrible. Dawn French is a talented comedian, but this book is dreadful and so unrealistic with so many errors. There seems to have been no research done on any of the themes. How did it get past the editor? We can definitely understand the impulse in that moment. The hard part for her and anyone else to be sympathetic to is that she kept the baby. And so she does, for 17 years. Dawn French describes her book, Because of You as a love letter to her daughter, step-daughter and mother. She claims that the book dared her to write it.The final scenes are so perfectly executed they almost broke my heart. Because of You is a story to cherish Sunday Express Harrowing but uplifting . . . It is a book about mistakes, regret, forgiveness and unconditional love Daily Mirror Unfortunately, Hope’s baby is stillborn whilst Anna has a beautiful baby girl she calls Florence. A few hours later as Hope is heading home she goes past Anna’s room where both she and her partner are asleep and she sneaks a peek at the baby. Little Florence lifts her hand to Hope and at that moment she loses all sense of what is right and wrong and puts the baby in her night bag and carries her out to the car where her other half is waiting. Now, the first thing I’m going to say about this book is that I have some complicated feelings about it. There were things I loved about it, but also things that I am still questioning.

A bright, brilliant and heartbreaking tale of two mothers, two babies and the far-reaching consequences of one fateful day Yahoo! Style

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criminal mummy tells stolen daughter the truth at age 17. Why? Who knows. They then turn themselves in at the police station. Why? Who knows. Because Of You is Dawn French's stunning new novel, told with her signature humour, warmth and so much love. Because Of You is a tale told with warmth by a storyteller who never takes herself too seriously Sunday Express In Because of You, Hope gives birth to a still born baby and goes on to steal the child of another woman, Anna, who had given birth the same hospital that night. Hope raises the child Minnie as her own. When Minnie becomes pregnant at 17 it is discovered that she has a hereditary heart defect, inherited from her biological father, Julius. Hope tells her Minnnie the truth of her birth, before handing herself in to the police. It is then that events speed on to a dramatic conclusion.

if you want something special and a well done and written story, that is heartbreaking and makes you feel with the mothers and the child that goes through what’s happening in this book? I rather struggled with the, I suppose, rather simplistic response to a very serious event which then snowballed. When the big reveal comes there is of course upset, which then is made better by a cup of tea, together with the response from Minnie “Soz for the ugly things I said” in the heat of the moment. You would expect Minnie to be outraged and, well, beside herself, apoplectic, devastated and traumatised (at the very least) when the situation is laid bare and the “ugly things” expressed would be the least of their worries. You have an adopted child [ Billie, 29 , whom French adopted with her ex-husband Lenny Henry ]. Where do you think the line between nature and nurture falls?Because of You is a story of a mother’s love, loss and sacrifice and shows how those bonds between a mother and child can never really be lost. I have to admit to being rather wet-eyed by the end. You may well need tissues. There might be some aspects that seem rather far-fetched but for me there could have been no other other way for the story to go. Obviously without giving the story line away, the premis of the book is the switched baby scenario. The writing in pleasant and engaging and it did hold my attention. However her narrative has more holes than my Granny's crochet blanket. She will have you believe that a baby is taken from a hospital, and the crime is being investigated by a lone detective sergeant and a couple of detective constables. Her treatment of the police is woeful and fuels prejudices that are quite unbecoming by authors of her caliber. I think she has relied solely on her fertile imagination in favor of any kind of research into police procedures' , or still birth hospital procedures. I could see the charm in the writing that others have praised in the narrative – it is indeed warm and heartfelt but sadly it really didn’t work for me. The publicists have highlighted Russell Brand’s one word comment – “incredible” – to promote the book but if you look up the dictionary definition of ‘incredible’ you will see that the word actually means “impossible to believe / difficult to believe. Extraordinary“. I am firmly in Russell’s camp. As the old millennium turns into the new, two very different women give birth to two very similar daughters.