4/5 stars

Book Description:
Alex crossed to the bed, where the only woman he had ever loved lay immobile. There was an ugly dark bruise along her jaw, but far more shocking was the plastic breathing tube protruding from between the lips he’d kissed only hours earlier. Despair and fear rose in Alex’s throat. ‘We have a little boy. His name is Connor. He still needs his mother… We both do.’

When Lisa married Alex, she gave his life meaning. She was a professional astronomer: a stargazer. And when she gazed at Alex, she saw that behind his tough exterior was a man she could love.

Alex, Lisa and their young son Connor made a happy little universe. But then Lisa dies in a train crash, and their perfect world is destroyed. Alex is shattered by loss, and overwhelmed by the difficulties of being a single father to a six-year-old. How can he and Connor carry on without Lisa lighting up their lives?

But throughout her life Lisa touched the hearts of more people than just her family. And as those people whose fates were changed come forward after her tragic death, Alex hears their stories and begins to realise the world may not be as cruel and senseless as it seems. If you can find the strength to start over, there are new beginnings in even our most heartbreaking moments…

Million-copy bestselling author Dani Atkins returns for this gripping, powerful and emotional page turner that fans of Jodi Picoult, Diane Chamberlain and Kate Hewitt will find completely unputdownable.

Author Bio:
Dani Atkins is an award-winning novelist. Her 2013 debut THEN AND ALWAYS (published as FRACTURED in the UK) has been translated into seventeen languages and has sold more than half a million copies globally.
Dani is the author of five other bestselling novels (THE STORY OF US, OUR SONG, THIS LOVE, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING and A MILLION DREAMS) and PERFECT STRANGERS, a standalone eBook novella. In 2018, THIS LOVE won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award at the RNA awards in London. Dani lives in a small village in the English countryside, in a 300 year old cottage, with her husband, one Siamese cat and a very soppy Border Collie.
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My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this story.  It’s full of characters with great depth living lives that definitely are not boring.  I’ll be honest, the beginning of the book had me so sad.  But as I watched each character overcome their hardships and move on from horrible tragedy, I really enjoyed the journey.  Grief is such a crazy thing and seeing how some of the characters survived it was very uplifting.

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