I have read quite a few books by Cecelia Ahern. Some I have enjoyed more than others. This falls somewhere in between. I was not fond of some of the more negative behaviour of the lead characters, and although this forms the pivotal points in the narrative, I still did not care for them.
The entire story in the present happens in a day, but we reach into different stages in the past to get a better picture of the present.
My first stumbling block was that the chapter headings do not indicate where and whose narrative it is. It takes a few sentences into it to figure that out. It was a bit of a problem initially, but gradually, it became easier to tell the present and past apart, as well as the father and the daughter.
It is a unique story of a man defined by his choices and the way they set him apart. It is also about how he let it. There is nothing happy about any of the sequence of events. There are a lot of unfulfilled people, and they have all lost time.
The secrets take their own time to come to the forefront, some more important and significant than others. Towards the end, it is about a daughter who manages to find some stability in her regular life after setting off to find out the things her father forgot to tell her after he had been actively withholding things.
It may not be a happy book, but I was glad I read it by the end. I may not recommend this to all, but it is one that can be read as part of a book club.
Superfluous Reading 