Mine

by Clare Empson

'Who am I? Why am I here? Why did my mother give me away?'

On the surface, Luke and his girlfriend Hannah seem to have a perfect life. He's an A&R man, she's an arts correspondent and they are devoted to their new-born son Samuel.

But beneath the gloss Luke has always felt like an outsider. So when he finds his birth mother Alice, the instant connection with her is a little like falling in love.

When Hannah goes back to work, Luke asks Alice to look after their son. But Alice - fuelled with grief from when her baby was taken from her 27 years ago - starts to fall in love with Samuel. And Luke won't settle for his mother pushing him aside once again...

• ISBN10: 1409177750
• ISBN13: 9781409177753
• Publish Date: 22 August 2019
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 12 April 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[stressedrach]

This was such an emotional read, Luke was adopted at birth, he found out when he was eight and when he was a lot older decides to contact his birth mother. They get on well initially, but when Alice offers to look after Luke’s son Samuel Luke starts feeling pushed aside, can they get past it?
Told in two time frames, the past when Alice was a young girl and the present day. I thought this was a good touch as I felt I got to know both Luke and Alice equally. I felt almost every emotion going while reading it and I keep thinking about it now I have finished. I think it will stay with me for a long time.
Clare Empson wrote this beautifully, it flowed well and kept my attention throughout. It really was a remarkable book.

[zooloo1983]

Well, it’s a fact she did it again! Clare has broken me again! This is the second book I’ve read by her and Him was my book of the year last year, so when I picked this up I thought I knew what to expect! I was wrong.

I knew she would write a story where she had snappy chapters to keep me reading because I had to know what the frick would happen.

I knew she would write a story where we saw what happened in the past to shape the future and then write the present day to see the fallout.

I knew she would write a story where love would be so encompassing and passionate but also destructive.

What I didn’t expect were the number of tears there would be, I still knew there would be some. When we reach the catastrophic events in the past, I was shocked, my world had been rocked because even though you knew something like that would happen you still didn’t expect it to actually happen. Again, Clare has broken me. How a few sentences in a book can destroy you is unreal. You become protective of the people that are involved and you want to change the author’s words to make it all right in the world again. Problem is, as we know, we can’t. We have to somehow accept the events and we have to deal with it just like the characters. Man! How do we do that!

Alice is damaged due to what happened in her past, in the 70s, and Luke, he is damaged due to this past. It is euphoric when we see them meet for the first time, and there is so much hope. A hope that things can finally be different. As in Him, Mine is pivotal around love and destruction and it pulls you in from the opening pages. I couldn’t let go of Alice and Luke’s journey.

Even though this is not a short book, I felt everything was rushed. It was just over too quickly, I mean I just devoured this book and now I am feeling so annoyed with myself that I didn’t savour the book more. I am so bloody gutted it’s over! I just know that anything Clare writes I will be reading, it’s like a compulsion I had to read the story written.

Mine tackles a subject of adoption and the impacts on everyone’s lives that it can have. It is incredibly emotive and it is one that will stay with me. My only complaint is that it is over way too quickly! I do not know what else to say, it will definitely be in my list at the end of the year.