I've struggled through this for a few weeks and between the dark/depressing plot and my dislike of the main character, I'm going to have shelve this for a while.

A beautiful novel of one woman's journey of resurrection through her grief, pain, and loss over the death of her daughter. This is her first novel and all I can say is wow! It has a few stilting moments but otherwise great prose. ( )

I received this book as an Early Review copy. I got through the first third - Cleo's accident and the immediate aftermath quite easily. The last third was great as Abbe goes back to Africa and reconnects there with family and friends from her difficult past. The middle part of the book, however, seemed to drag on forever. It took me a very long time to wade through it and I can't even tell you anything I remember of it. I am glad I persevered but came very close to giving up ( )

This book is a very emotional read. The feelings of the main character are so well written that she becomes "real", not just a character in a book. It has characters that are flawed, have real problems, doubts, hurts and fears.

It is a book that you won't want to put down. It might take some time to get into, but once it does it will be hard to stop reading until the last word.

I can't wait for more from this author. ( )

What happens to a couple when their only child dies tragically? Can they hold it together or will it all fall apart? As a mother, how do you know when to move forward with your life without betraying the memory of your child?

In Come Sunday by Isla Morley, Greg and Abbe are shattered when the center of their lives, their daughter Chloe, dies after being hit by a car. Abbe’s inability to forgive the driver, or her best friends who were watching Chloe ultimately leads to cracks in her marriage and an internal crumbling of herself. When everything in her life seems to have finally gone as low as she can take it, there is nothing to do but return to her home in Africa and find answers to the questions from her spotty childhood. In this journey, will she be able to recover her own life and move forward?

For the majority of this book I struggled with characters who felt almost too real. Too selfish. At times, I wanted to shake Abbe and remind her that she wasn’t the only person who’d lost her daughter. However, as a mother, who is to say I wouldn’t just crumble the way Abbe did? It is easy for someone who isn’t in a situation to say “Forgive” and Abbe was a very human character. She didn’t take the good way or the easy way and she didn’t do what anyone would expect her character to do. It made her incredibly unlikable. It’s what made her dynamic. I still got tired of her whining. I wanted her to move forward. I wanted growth. I wanted it a lot faster than I got it.

Overall, the last 75 pages of the book were the most compelling of the entire novel. Abbe’s trip back to Africa was perhaps the meat and potatoes of the book and I wish I’d had more of this than her time in Hawaii. What she finds there, about her mother, her family and about herself was page-turning. It took me over a month to finish this book. The last 75 pages were easily read in one sitting. If you can get through the first part of the book, and it’s not easy to do so because there is a lot of cringing through it, this is a book well worth reading. It’s not easy to read about death, grief and mourning. It’s not easy when a protagonist refuses to forgive a character that deserves it and that character refuses to forgive himself. It’s not easy when side characters are worthy of novels themselves.

But it was worth at least one read for the ending alone. ( )