An Unforgettable Story

ABOUT THE BOOK

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sea Dragon Press
• Time: 12 hours, 18 minutes

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 15, 2022

Two women, bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart.

From Jenni Ogden, author of bestselling novel A Drop in the Ocean (Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction) comes a compelling family saga set in the Australian tropics and spanning the 1960s to 1990s.

Her mother dead from a drug overdose, thirteen-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother’s friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch’s remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence, and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane she and Ben share a hippie lifestyle with Cassandra and husband, Sebastian. But while earth-mother Cassandra effortlessly produces beautiful babies, for Olivia, becoming a mother is hard. Even harder is discovering the truth about her own mother. And when the unimaginable happens, destroying the friendship with Cassandra that has been her bedrock for so long, Olivia tells herself that she doesn’t deserve a family, nor a place to call home.

How in the world do I review a story that I really liked without hyping it and conveying high expectations to others? I finished this some time ago but kept ignoring the fact that I needed to post a review. But for a person who likes all her ducks in a row, time’s up.

This beautifully narrated story had me listening to it every chance I could. While it covers many sensitive concerns, I thought it all tied together and worked. Though for some, it may be too close to home to feel comfortable.

The story follows Olivia Newman, who is raised by her mother’s best friend Cathie Tulloch and Cathie’s husband. As Olivia nears her dreams of a career in publishing, she finds she’s pregnant. Unmarried and confused since her relationship is so new, she turns to her foster sister, Cassandra. Their growing relationship, of which there are many ups and downs, pretty much sums up the book.

Ogden ties the characters together in a way that feels believable and brings about lots of emotions. At times the love and pain Olivia and Cassandra feel seem almost tangible. And for that matter, I was completely drawn in by all the secondary characters. 

It’s not light reading that caused me to go away feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. It felt like an honest glimpse into life. But at the same time, a great element of love wound through this story.

My Concerns

For some, this might represent life just a little bit too much. It covers topics such as abortion, mother and daughter relationships, adoption, death, surrogacy, and more. At one point I considered that the story might have a political agenda, and if that was the case it wasn’t going to work for me. If you, like me, give that a thought, you can quickly dismiss it. It was a story. I felt no underlying threads of an ulterior motive.

As I mentioned, this covers lots of topics, and everything has an element of reality attached. For some, it won’t be the light-and-airy beach read you are looking for. It’s deeper, yet so captivating.

I took a long time to think about this before writing my review. I hate to hype a book up since it’s almost impossible to live up to preconceived notions. But this story and narrator brought these characters to life.

I totally enjoyed it and will definitely have this author and narrator on my radar.

My thanks to NetGalley and Sea Dragon Press for the early copy of this audiobook and the ability to give my opinion without stipulations.

About the Author

from her website

I grew up in a country town in the South Island of New Zealand, in a home bursting with books and music. Armed with NZ and Australian university degrees in Zoology and Psychology—including a PhD in Neuropsychology—and now with four children, John and I moved to Boston, where I took up a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and worked with H.M., the most famous amnesiac in history. Returning to Auckland University, I became the Director of the Clinical Psychology program, and over the next twenty-two years immersed myself in teaching, clinical practice and research in clinical neuropsychology, as well as traveling extensively and enjoying research fellowships at Oxford University and the Australian National University. In July, 2015, the International Neuropsychological Society recognized my work with a Distinguished Career Award. Writing over 60 scientific journal articles and serving on a number of editorial boards taught me how to ‘tell, not show.’ However, my non-fiction books, Fractured Minds: A Case-Study Approach to Clinical Neuropsychology (OUP, New York, 1996, 2005), and Trouble In Mind: Stories from a Neuropsychologist’s Casebook (OUP, New York, 2012; Scribe, Australia, 2013), featuring the moving stories of patients with a wide range of common and rare neuropsychological disorders, gave me practice in ‘showing’ as well as ‘telling,’ and a taste of the pleasures I hoped to indulge in as a novelist some day when I had time. That day has come, and we now live off-grid on a remote island off the coast of NZ, with winters spent traveling and keeping warm at our second home in tropical Far North Queensland. My novels, not surprisingly, usually have psychological and medical subthemes, and my settings draw on my love of exotic and far-flung locations, frequently remote islands! When I’m not writing or traveling, I can be found on the beach—always with a book—or spending time with my family, now expanded to include five grandchildren.

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