First published 2010
Ellie Lerner gets the call that changes everything. Her best friend Lucy Stafford has been murdered in broad daylight on a quiet Notting Hill street while walking her daughter Sophie to school. Ellie leaves her husband Phillip in America and flies to London for the funeral, knowing she must stay with eight-year-old Sophie, her goddaughter. The child has stopped speaking since witnessing her mother's death. Her father Greg retreats into his own grief, leaving Ellie to care for Sophie alone. Ellie turns to the book that once comforted her as a child, reading The Secret Garden aloud to Sophie week after week. As Sophie slowly begins to heal, Ellie confronts her own buried pain. She must face the stillbirth that destroyed part of her, examine her marriage to Phillip, and process a shocking truth about Lucy that threatens everything she believed about their friendship.
Genres: fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, grief, healing
Setting: London, Notting Hill
Period: contemporary
448 pages · Kindle Edition · Transworld Digital
Content warnings: death