Because of You: The bestselling Richard & Judy book club pick

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In another room on the ward Hope, and her partner Quiet Isaac, are nervous but excited at the prospect of the soon-to-be new addition to their little family. Hope and Isaac know love, true love, and their relationship is tender, with a shared appreciation for family, for kindness and for knowing what is truly important in life. Although the pregnancy was unexpected, both Hope and Isaac embrace this new future and are very much looking forward to this new journey they are about to embark on. Because of You is very much a story about a mother’s love. It is a tale of deep sadness, of regret and of anguish, at times uplifting but also filled with a suffering and torment. There are characters we should intensely dislike in this sometimes challenging tale but Dawn French somehow makes the reader have empathy and compassion instead. A bright, brilliant and heartbreaking tale of two mothers, two babies and the far-reaching consequences of one fateful day Yahoo! Style

Oh my goodness. This was such an emotional read with a difficult subject at its heart but amongst the emotional turmoil there is humour too. Dawn French handles the story with warmth and somehow even though a wrong has been done, the leading female characters feel so credible that you really care about them. In fact they all have vivid personalities, including the minor characters. There are those like DI Thripshaw that provide the comedic and toe curling moments with his malapropisms and crassness whilst his colleague DC Debbie Cheese provides the empathy. There are way too many holes in the plot. How could someone commit a crime of this sort and get away with it so easily with an ongoing police investigation (the police inspector was another one dimensional character) is beyond me. Whatever happened to the stillborn baby that Hope & Isaac left at the hospital? .It is by the UK comedienne (and now something of a national treasure) Dawn French. With her first being involved with the Comic Strip when I was about 14 (and just discovering alternative comedy), I feel like I grew up with her comedy through Girls on Top and BBC2 French and Saunders (before they moved to BBC1 and a big budget and got a little too self-indulgent), but before her move rather to the safety of the mainstream with The Vicar of Dibley. Fans who have waited five long years for French's fourth novel won't be disappointed: Because Of You is a book with a beating heart, a story told with warmth and verve Daily Express Told with French's unfailing wit and warmth, Because Of You is the tale of family bonds and the mother-daughter relationships that ultimately make us who we are Independent For eighteen years Hope kept the secret from everyone, not telling anyone her real daughter was stillborn and the daughter she has now, Minnie, isn’t really hers. But as time goes on Hope realises what she did was wrong and she needs to come clean, but what will happen to her perfect family once the world finds out?

Because of You is a thought-provoking read injected with a warmth we’ve come to expect from Dawn French. Featuring very strong women with fortitude and resilience it is a story filled with a great sense of love and remorse, of tolerance and forgiveness. Now, the first thing I’m going to say about this book is that I have some complicated feelings about it. There were things I loved about it, but also things that I am still questioning.

Dawn French moves between the aftermath of that fateful night and 18 years later, when the explosive impact of Hope's actions is finally felt Daily Express

I grew up watching French & Saunders so I could hear Dawn French’s very distinct voice in my head as I was reading it. She’s funny and talented but I really disliked this book. It was upsetting and irritating in equal measure. This was an awful book. I found the beginning and the end very distressing, and most of the rest of it farcical and not funny. It’s a Marmite book: I’m really not sure it’s one you could be on the fence about. I absolutely loved Because of You. Fantastic, passionate, compassionate, so much wisdom, a lot of humour, very real and credible' BERNARDINE EVARISTO, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other Because of You is a glorious, beautiful book. I knew what Hope had done was so wrong and on many levels evil, but I also couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Grief is a strange and difficult emotion to control and I can understand the want to hold a baby and love a child like the one she had lost. At the same time, she causes so much grief to the other family by taking their daughter. We can definitely understand the impulse in that moment. The hard part for her and anyone else to be sympathetic to is that she kept the baby. And so she does, for 17 years.

About the Author

Because of You by Dawn French is published with Penguin Michael Joseph Books. It is the fourth novel from the number one bestselling author and is described as ‘life-affirming and moving, a stunning new novel, told with Dawn French’s signature humour, warmth and so much love.’ Because of You was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021. French can spin a yarn . . . which sets According to YES apart. Think the vicar of Dibley, without the dog collar. YES YES YES indeed Independent The final scenes are so perfectly executed they almost broke my heart. Because of You is a story to cherish Sunday Express I'm finding it difficult to distill what I thought about this story. The blurb says 'told with her signature humour, warmth and so much love'. And we can hear Dawn French's voice throughout. If you follow Dawn at all, you know what I mean. But I actually thought that hearing Dawn's 'voice' throughout was distracting. And the humour, such as it was in a difficult story such as this, was like 'cheap'. And I didn't laugh, and after the first couple of throw out lines, didn't even smile. It began to annoy me. Dawn French said in her interview that she wanted to explore the themes of nature vs nurture and loss. Honestly, the very thought of hinging the exploration of nature vs nurture on a stolen baby and a stillbirth makes me uncomfortable as a parent. The exploration of loss felt no more than a lip service as it seemed like the author wanted to generate warm feelings for Hope in the readers' minds, so she conveniently chose to sideline the grief of Anna. Maybe it's me, but I fail to see why there should even be an expectation of warm feelings here for someone who committed the unimaginable crime of stealing a newborn, no matter what circumstances drove her to do it or how much effort she put into raising that baby. As a parent, this not only felt disturbing to me but it also felt offensive.

Terrible. Dawn French is a talented comedian, but this book is dreadful and so unrealistic with so many errors. There seems to have been no research done on any of the themes. How did it get past the editor? I absolutely loved Because of You. Fantastic, passionate, compassionate, so much wisdom, a lot of humour, very real and credible BERNARDINE EVARISTO, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other The humor in all situations felt forced to me, the characters and their behaviors illogical and unrealistic especially for the situations they were in, also no character actually had real characteristics. I can’t even remember the names of them… i think the stillborn was called Minnie. That should tell you something, if i can only remember that name! It all felt a bit random and disconnected, jumping from one thing to the next. The time jumps in the book certainly didn’t help with that.

Seventeen years later, the gods who keep watch over broken-hearted mothers wreak mighty revenge, and the truth starts rolling, terrible and deep, toward them all.