Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Review of BEFORE I LET YOU GO by KELLY RIMMER

Paperback, 384 pages
Published April 3rd, 2018 by Graydon House
ISBN 1525820842

The 2:00 a.m. call is the first time Lexie Vidler has heard her sister’s voice in years. Annie is a drug addict, a thief, a liar—and in trouble, again. Lexie has always bailed Annie out, given her money, a place to sleep sent her to every kind of rehab. But this time, she’s not just strung out—she’s pregnant and in premature labor. If she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby—maybe even go to prison. But the alternative is unthinkable.

As weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancĂ© only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters’ childhood, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face. But will the journey heal Annie, or lead her down a darker path?

Both candid and compassionate, Before I Let You Go explores a hotly divisive topic and asks how far the ties of family love can be stretched before they finally break.


The title BEFORE I LET YOU GO was perfect for this book since it held me captivated so in my mind, I kept thinking to the book “before I let you go I must know how you end”. Although, in the beginning, I was skeptical. When I started reading chapter eight all that was going through my mind was this is too much information to be giving away so early in the book. However, I judged the route the author was taking with the book prematurely as the story progressed it became intense and dramatic making it difficult to put the book down.
It’s hard to find the words to describe the agony of watching a newborn baby suffer like for hours and days on end. I study Daisy closely and I learn to read the signs, but it’s easy to tell when the morphine is wearing off. First, the muscles of her legs and her arms go rigid, then her little lips tremble, and sometimes the rash sweeps over her skin like a tide coming in. Eventually, jerky squirms progress until she’s writhing and screaming inconsolably.
Though the journey these characters took was dreadful more than not at times the sun shined through bringing rays of hope for the future. Rimmer did not miss a beat writing a solid prose the flow was perfect with Lexie telling the part of the story that takes place in the present day as Annie fills the readers in on their troubled childhood including information regarding herself.  Also, Rimmer was spot-on with all the medical jargon which is always my favorite part of any book. This book was worth my time!  




Kelly Rimmer is the USA Today bestselling women’s fiction author of five novels, including Me Without You and The Secret Daughter. She lives in rural Australia with her husband, 2 children and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil. Her novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. 







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