Book Review: Carry You

By Becky Gulc

“For you mum. This is all for you”

For anyone who has loved, lost or found it hard to let go, CARRY YOU will make you laugh, cry and celebrate your best friends. Perfect for fans of Marian Keyes and Jo Jo Moyes.

Daisy has lost her mum to breast cancer. She’s at rock bottom and doesn’t think she’ll ever get back up again. Her best friend Abi has other ideas – she tells it like it is and she’s determined to make Daisy remember the person she used to be.

What Daisy doesn’t know is that, thanks to Abi, her life is about to take an unexpected turn, when she signs them up to do a charity walk. Added to which, someone is about to burst into Daisy’s world in a riot of colour reminding her that life can be full of surprises. (Synopsis courtesy of Amazon UK.)

I’ll be honest, when I read the synopsis for this book I saw the word cancer and wasn’t sure if this book was going to offer me the kind of happy escapism I was looking for at this point for a range of reasons. But as reviewers we of course read all kinds of books so I put my personal preferences to one side and started reading.

I thought this book would be depressing, but actually it is a very funny and thoughtful novel. Daisy might be at ‘rock bottom’ but she knows it, she is very witty throughout the novel and she is starting to (or being forced by her friend Abi) to emerge from the darkest days of grief when we meet her. Daisy knows she can’t sit indoors at her friend’s house all the time with Notting Hill on repeat, but getting her out and about again is somewhat of a task for Abi.

Daisy is such a likeable character, sometimes when a character is constantly witty in a novel it can feel a bit forced, but this was effortlessly natural and came through very strongly through the internal dialogue. I realised with her how grief can affect someone in so many different ways. I felt her struggle to start living again rather than existing, but this was done in such a way as not to focus too heavily on her mum’s illness and passing, just enough to keep it meaningful but not too sad.

I enjoyed the focus on and build up to Daisy and Abi doing the moon walk, bringing with it various training predicaments and partners. Abi is also an interesting character; she is an amazing friend, but there’s enough secrecy to make you wonder what is really going on in her life as well as being somewhat of an angel to Daisy. There is also some conflict with Daisy’s family relating to inheritance. This offered an interesting sub-plot and I enjoyed how what I thought would be the predictable outcome didn’t actually happen.

There’s also of course a love interest or two, and I don’t want to give anything away but just to say I thought both possible matches were great in what they offered to the story and moving it forward. The final pairing is such a beautiful couple, I loved that we very slowly learn more and more about the man in question but love him from the very beginning, one of my favourite male leads in a long time.

Thanks to Avon for the book in exchange for an honest review.