I am honoured and delighted to be kicking off the blog tour for a simply wonderful book WE OWN THE SKY by Luke Allnutt. My thanks to the publishers Trapeze for the opportunity to read this emotional and heartbreaking story.
Book Blurb:
A story about love, loss and finding hope-against all odds.
Rob Coates can’t believe his luck. There is Anna, his incredible wife, and most precious of all, Jack, their son, who makes every day an extraordinary adventure. Rob feels like he’s won the lottery of life. Or rather-he did. Until the day it all changes when Anna becomes convinced there is something wrong with Jack.
Now Rob sleepwalks through his days, unable to bridge the gulf that separates him from his wife, his son and the business of living. But he’s determined to come to terms with what’s happened-and find a way back to life, and forgiveness.
We Own the Sky will resonate with anyone who has ever suffered loss or experienced great love. Luke Allnutt shows that the journey from hope to despair and back is never as simple as we think, and that even the most thoroughly broken heart can learn to beat again.
My Review:
Sometimes you start a book and within the first few paragraphs you just connect. Maybe it’s the writing, the situation or the characters, but occasionally these books get under your skin and hook you until the final page.
For me personally, this was one of those books. As a parent it is never easy to read about a young child becoming ill, or follow the parents anguish and hope and desperation to save their son, but this story deals with the subject with compassion and a real sense of believability.
Told entirely through the fathers eyes, We Own The Sky is a story that touched me deeply. I was thinking about this book constantly and when I read the final chapter I knew it would stay with me for a long time afterwards.
A really beautiful and heartbreaking story about love, grief, family, hope and how far we would go to protect our loved ones.
Highly recommended
What Everyone Else is Saying:
Allnutt provides a visceral, heartbreaking portrait of a father facing the loss of his ‘beautiful boy.’ Not the macho loss of football scarves and shared pints, but the inconceivable evaporation of memories, of smells and the warmth of physical contact with our children that can be all too fleeting. (Jem Lester, author of SHTUM)
This book will break your heart, but repair it too. Luke Allnutt’s writing is full of compassion. It made me hold my loved ones a little bit closer.’ (Katie May, author of THE WHITSTABLE HIGH TIDE SWIMMING CLUB)
Heartbreaking and devastating and complicated, We Own the Sky offers something remarkable: light in the darkest dark and redemption where there ought to be none.” (Laurie Frankel, bestselling author of THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS)
Both movingly tender and unflinchingly honest – We Own the Sky is story that will stay with me. (Isabel Ashdown, author of LITTLE SISTER)
Beautifully rendered and profoundly moving, We Own the Sky illustrates the lengths we’ll go to for those we love. Luke Allnutt is a major new talent in fiction and his debut is not to be missed. (Camille Pagán, bestselling author of Life and Other Near-Death Experiences)
We Own the Sky is a heartbreak of a novel filled with love, sorrow, pain, and–ultimately–hope. The characters are drawn so tenderly, with such beautiful detail, that it’s impossible not to feel the emotions that pulse through the pages. Powerful, touching, and poignant, this family’s love story had me in tears. (Jill Santopolo, bestselling author of The Light We Lost)
What an incredible book this is – such gut-wrenching honesty and depth of emotion. Anyone who wishes David Nicholls would write faster needs to grab this with both hands. It’s a truly stunning achievement. (Jill Mansell)
We Own the Sky is a life-affirming yet heart-breaking wonder of a book about love in all its forms. Parental love, with the doubts, fears and joy that it brings and also the headrush of falling in love followed by the tough reality of trying to keep alive the magic once real life rears its head. The writing throughout is fluent and lyrical, full of humour and heart. It is one of the most raw and honest novels I’ve read in a long time – and yet Allnutt constantly finds the joy amidst the heartbreak – the chinks of light in the darkness. (Katie Marsh, author of MY EVERYTHING)
Deeply affecting. A beautiful, remarkable book. (Lucy Diamond, author of THE SECRETS OF HAPPINESS)
Utterly beautiful, heartbreaking and ultimately uplifting. (Rachael Lucas, author of The State of Grace)
