Half a World Away: The heart-warming, heart-breaking Richard and Judy Book Club selection

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What an involving, captivating, heart-rending story. Some books fade from the memory but I know I'm never going to forget these characters - they feel like my own family. (Jill Mansell)

Trigger warnings: May contain spoilers. Select from here cancer, death, adoption to here to see list of trigger warnings. Mike Gayle just gets better and better and HALF A WORLD AWAY might be the loveliest yet. -- Jenny Colgan, author of The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-AfterHe has a wonderful way of lifting the reader up while tugging at our heart strings at the same time. A lovely story about what family really means... -- Fionnuala Kearney Meanwhile over in an affluent part of London, Noah is a successful barrister with a wife and daughter he adores. Knowing he was adopted, he has always accepted this with no desire to look into where he came from and trace his birth mother. His refusal to accept his past is causing marital problems and when he receives a letter from someone claiming to be his sister his life is turned upside down.

When I finished High School I studied at the University of Sydney. I had a great time studying mainly history but also getting involved in lots of things happening at the University and the city. It was the time of the anti-Vietnam war protests and the rise of the Women's Movement. This is a wonderful book about family, unconditional love and hope. It is joyful, tearful, emotional, moving and heart-warming and heart-breaking in equal measures. I made the mistake of listening to the book whilst shopping in Tesco’s and started sobbing in the pasta aisle! Now in her early 40’s Kerry is a single mum to a young son, living on a rough estate, she has her own small business cleaning the houses of the rich and entitled. Having been put into the care system at a young age and separated from her younger brother Jason when he was 18 months old, she has spent her life determined to provide for her own child and give him the stability and direction she never had. I also used to live in Manchester — another great city (although technically I lived in Salford which is next door but that’s sort of splitting hairs).

With now her mother has passed away, she decides to find her brother, Noah Martineau who is a successful barrister, with a posh voice and a wife and daughter living in a big house. Mike Gayle just gets better and better and HALF A WORLD AWAY might be the loveliest yet. (Jenny Colgan, author of The Little Shop of Happy-Ever-After) I too” was exactly the kind of thing Steve said. “Perhaps” for “maybe,” “distressed” for “upset,” and so on. He was a word nerd.