Things We Never Said

Title: Things We Never Said

Author: Nick Alexander

Publisher: Amazon Publishing UK, Lake Union Publishing 4 Sept 2018

Pages: 367 pages

How I Read It: ARC book

Genre: General Fiction (adult), Women’s Fiction

My Rating: 4 crowns

Synopsis:

All the love she ever gave. Every secret she never told.

Catherine was the love of Sean’s life. But now she is gone. All that’s left is a box full of envelopes, each containing a snapshot and a cassette tape.

Through a series of recordings, Catherine shares their long love story, but will Sean recognise the story she tells? Catherine’s words have been chosen with love, but are painfully honest—and sometimes simply painful. She reveals every unspoken thought and every secret she kept from her husband—revelations that will shake everything Sean thought he knew about their life together.

But as disconcerting as the tapes turn out to be, Sean prays that they will ultimately confirm the one thing he never dared question. Does destiny exist? And were his and Catherine’s love and life together always meant to be?

My Thoughts

‘Things We Never Said’ was a very enjoyable book. I really liked how every chapter started off with a snapshot and then a cassette recording of his wife’s explanation of the photo. I felt for, Sean, the main protagonist, as he listened to his wife’s revelations.

“On Wednesday evening, he bursts into tears while driving home and has to pull over into a lay-by until he can see properly again...he realises he had been remembering kissing Catherine in the middle of the ring road.”

It’s a very moving story about grief and a man’s struggle to get through while maintaining his relationships with his daughter, family and friends. While he listens to the cassettes he also reflects on his own life and makes changes to his current life.

“He has been thinking about what Catherine said, that he has stopped singing. He’s been trying to work out when and why that happened and has realised that he’s even stopped listening to music.”

Some of Catherine’s revelations are very painful for Sean and I thought it very unfair for him to be finding these things out when she had passed, maybe it was easier for her to reveal them that way, but it caused him lots of different emotions and he was still trying to deal with the grief of losing her.

“Sean spends the week feeling jealous. He’s fully aware that it’s absurd to be feeling jealous of one’s late wife’s ex-boyfriend from thirty-five years ago, but he can’t help himself.”

Sean’s neighbour and family friend Maggie was a big support to Sean and his daughter during their grieving period, but she was very unsure about the validity of the cassettes and was worried that Sean was placing too much importance on them. I think they helped him through his grief.

“But just remember that...Look, this is difficult to say, but she’s gone, Sean...it’s like I said before. It’s all those drugs she was on, sweetie. That’s all it is.”

Overall, I highly recommend this book. It is a sweet, warm and moving story about love, loss, grief, change and happiness. It keeps you well entertained with it’s many revelations along the way.

“To lose someone you really love/ is hard beyond belief/ Your heart comes close to breaking point/ and no one knows the grief/ Many times I’ve thought of you / and many times I’ve cried/ If my love could have saved you/ you never would have died.”

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release