Definitely Fine - Amy Lavelle

Genre: General Fiction | Adult Fiction

Release Date: Expected 5th August 2021

If there was ever a time Hannah wanted to call her Mum, it was now. But she can't, and she never will again.

All it took was an unexpected fall and she's gone. She'll never get to watch that new show with her, never eat her roast potatoes again, never be able to call her and ask how she's supposed to get through this without her. Hannah has never lived in a world without her Mother and now everything is different.

Along with her new counsellor, also named Hannah, she tries to start her new life. Is she greiving right? Is she grieving at all? Why isn't everyone else sad enough? How do you live your life when your compass is suddenly gone?

'Definitely Fine' is an honest and heartbreakingly real story about how we're expected to deal with death and loss and the reality that it's never that simple. We see Hannah going through the many faces of despair - of course there's sadness and numbness, but then there's the irrationality, the impulsiveness and the anger that we're just not supposed to talk about.

Along with her Dad and Sister, the family all try in their own ways to deal with this - from getting drunk and dancing on tables, sneakily baking lots of lasagnes, sleeping all day or trying to get pregnant to replace the hole left in their lives.

This book was truly, viscerally beautiful and one of the most true-to-life stories of recovery that I've ever read - it reminded me of all the times I'd lost someone I love and wasn't sure I was allowed to be happy, or laugh, even though let's be honest - life, even in it's worst moments, is totally ridiculous and needs to be laughed at.

When we'd finally arrived at the last page - the ending was just that. A single page, a single moment that doesn't really feel like an ending at all. It's that single moment that you finally, blissfully, manage to find peace in something else even for a second.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Amy Lavelle and Orion Publishing for an ARC in return for an honest review.

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