What an amazingly moving and impactful story! This book is hard-hitting, and it really presses the reader the live through the journey with the characters! This will make a great book club read and will create great discussion dialogue!
Two women with a lifelong friendship find themselves drifting apart at times and being ripped apart at others. The importance and difficulty of motherhood for the two of them begin to strain their relationship.
I really felt for Olivia in this story. How many horrible things can happen to one person? As we moved from one thing to another, I felt myself continuing to be pulled deeper and deeper into her story. I appreciated her contrasting personality to those around her, and I think it helped make her stand out and alone throughout the story.
There are so many controversial topics discussed in this story, and I would highly recommend reading my content warnings if you have sensitivity to certain topics. I really appreciated the research that went into the creation of this story and the topics woven into it. The situations felt real and true to life. This is a story that is going to stay with me for a long time.
Content Warnings:
Abortion, child loss, adoption, euthanasia, rape, surrogacy
Where to Find This Book:
Amazon ~ Apple ~ Books2Read ~ B&N ~ Kobo ~ GooglePlay ~ Goodreads
Two women, bound together by opposite personalities, friendship, love and family—until motherhood rips them apart.
From Jenni Ogden, author of best-selling A Drop in the Ocean, (Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction) comes a compelling family saga set in the Australian Tropics and spanning the 1960s to 1990s.
Her mother dead from a drug overdose, thirteen-year-old Olivia is rescued by Cathie Tulloch, her mother’s friend throughout the years they were held captive in Japanese prison camps in Sumatra in WWII. Welcomed into the Tulloch’s remote family home in the Australian tropics, introverted Olivia is claimed by dramatic, generous, controlling Cassandra Tulloch as her sister and best friend. Moving to the UK at 18, Olivia finds her independence — and partner Ben. But in 1970, after five years away, she is homesick, and ready to fulfill her long-held dream: to make a family of her own. In Brisbane she and Ben share a hippie lifestyle with Cassandra and husband, Sebastian. But while earth-mother Cassandra effortlessly produces beautiful babies, for Olivia, becoming a mother is hard. Even harder is discovering the truth about her own mother. And when the unimaginable happens, destroying the friendship with Cassandra that has been her bedrock for so long, Olivia tells herself that she doesn’t deserve a family, nor a place to call home.
Just the Facts:
Call My Name by Jenni Ogden
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Sea Dragon Press
Pub Date: April 2020
Jenni Ogden and her husband live off-grid on spectacular Great Barrier Island, 100 kms off the coast of New Zealand, a perfect place to write and for grandchildren to spend their holidays. Winters are often spent in Far North Tropical Queensland, close to Killara, the fictional home in Call My Name, her third novel.
Her debut novel published in 2016, A Drop in the Ocean, was an Amazon bestseller and won multiple awards including the 2016 Gold Nautilus Award for Fiction, Large Publisher.
Her second novel, The Moon is Missing, was published in 2020 and is set on London, New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and Great Barrier Island, NZ.
Jenni, who holds a PhD in Clinical Neuropsychology and was awarded the Distinguished Career Award by the International Neuropsychological Society in 2015, is well-known for her books featuring her patients’ moving stories: Fractured Minds: A Case-Study Approach to Clinical Neuropsychology, and Trouble In Mind: Stories from a Neuropsychologist’s Casebook.
Author Links: website ~ facebook ~ twitter ~ instagram ~ pinterest ~ goodreads
Thank you to IRead Book Tours for having me on this tour! You can see all the bloggers on tour here!
I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my honest review voluntarily.
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