#TheLastDay @ClaireDyer1 @DomePress

About The Last Day

They say three's a crowd but when Boyd moves back into the family home with his now amicably estranged wife, Vita, accompanied by his impossibly beautiful twenty-seven-year-old girlfriend, Honey, it seems the perfect solution: Boyd can get his finances back on track while he deals with his difficult, ailing mother; Honey can keep herself safe from her secret, troubled past; and Vita can carry on painting portraits of the pets she dislikes and telling herself she no longer minds her marriage is over. But the house in Albert Terrace is small and full of memories, and living together is unsettling. For Vita, Boyd and Honey love proves to be a surprising, dangerous thing and, one year on, their lives are changed forever.

My review of The Last Day

I'll.just start by saying that this book is simply stunning. I devoured every single word and I truly dId not want it to end. These three characters I know will stay with me for a very long time, as will this exquisite story about endless love in all of its beautiful forms.

The book is told from all three characters points of view. Vita's story is told in first person, and Boyd and Honey's voices in third. This worked for me, as I felt that it was Vita's story, but that I gained much needed insight and perspective from both Honey and Boyd, who also had their own story to tell. It is a novel of three stories that connect to make a whole.

This is a beautifully written book. I found myself focused upon the strength of women and how they embrace love and family in all of its many different ways. I tried to put myself in Vita's shoes. A woman who has now built up a life for herself after the breakdown of her marriage. She now has a sense of normality, of routine, with her painting career (although she hates painting pets). She is a practical woman, a no nonsense type, so when Boyd asks if he and Honey can move in with her, the only answer she can give is yes, and I really felt for her. I thought that she must be hurting so much inside, and that her outer shell would surely crack over time.

This is a book of secrets, and as I made my way through the book, the secrets were slowly revealed. The writing is exquisite, it draws you in, so that by the end of the book I really did feel as if I knew all three of these characters. I cared deeply for all of them, and although I couldn't put this book down for wanting to know what happened on 'the last day',  at the same time, I didn't want it to end.

The Last Day is a book about quiet love, not the all singing and all dancing kind, but the kind that lurks just under the surface. The kind that women nurture, that cares for others, the unconditional kind. This really is a beautiful book, that I'll admit made me shed a tear. It captures perfectly how everything can can change in just one moment, but that ultimately, love always survives.

The Last Day was published by The Dome Press on 15 February. It can be found on Amazon here.

I purchased my own paperback copy.