Yesterday's sun

This book intrigued me before I'd even bought it and it's description kept on pulling me back until eventually I did click buy. It promised the story of a moondial that would show you the future and this sparked in me a reminder of a book and tv show I'd loved many years before.

It is a very well crafted book, telling the story of Holly it begins on the day she is to give birth to her baby Libby and as she prepares to die in childbirth a future she had already seen thanks to a moondial in her garden. The book then spins back 18 months to the start of Holly's story and the beginning of her experiences with the moondial struggles she goes through in reaching her decision to go ahead with a pregnancy she knows she will not survive.

I loved the whole concept of this book, perhaps because of my memories of a childhood book I can't quite remember with a similar theme but this was a lovely concept for a book and very original. I couldn't quite believe how quickly I was going through it and almost didn't want it to be coming to an end. There is such lovely symbolism through the book in the ways the author draws in lots of symbols of motherhood in Holly's life through her sculpture and her relationship with neighbour Jocelyn.

The ending is well written and will leave you feeling that the characters have reached their intended conclusion but it is a sad read. We know early on that Holly is destined to die or give up having a child forever so death is a certainty in the books ending. There were so many ways I tried to convince myself this could be avoided but the author follows through her story beautifully.

I haven't read this authors work before but I loved her writing style, it pulled me in and made me want to keep reading and so I will be investigating her other work but I would thoroughly recommend this as a read and am now off to try and remember the name of that long forgotten book of my youth and the CBBC show that accompanied it....