Book Review - Take Me Home by Daniela Sacerdoti

My kindle has been broken for a fairly long time now, one of the casualties resulting from our recent house move. I’ve really missed it. As a special Valentine’s day present my lovely husband bought me a new one, and I’ve been eagerly waiting to join up with Chantelle’s ‘Read With Me’ Linky over on Mama Mummy Mum Blog. I’ve been taking regular baths as pregnancy aches and pains (plus increasing stress of looking after two little boys with a bump) has set in, so it was with some excitement I settled down to purchase my first book on the new Kindle.

I’m an easy reader – I’m happy to read any sorts of books really, so a good place to look for inspiration after my time out is the Kindle bestsellers list. The first book I came across that tickled my fancy was “Take me Home” by Daniela Sacerdoti. My parents live in the Scottish Highlands and the book blurb indicated this was the setting, it seemed like an easy read with some romance and a wee bit of mystery involved, and at only 69p just now on the Kindle, what’s not to like?

Take me Home is a fictional novel for adults written by Daniela Sacerdoti, it’s the second book in a loosely linked series all based around the interwoven lives of generations of families who live in the beautiful and nostalgic Glen Avich in the Scottish Highlands. 

It doesn’t take long to get engrossed in this book, after just a few pages you are soon transported into the emotional life of the main character - Inary. After leaving her terminally ill sister at home in Glen Avich to be cared for by her brother, the story initially unfolds around Inary’s relationships and interactions with her friends where she now lives and works in London. You quickly get drawn into Inarys life and how a series of traumatic events in her past have lead Inary to live her life the way she now does. 

Not far into the book you are uprooted from the generic London landscape back to Inary’s spectacular childhood home; Glen Avich. Upon Inarys return to Glen Avich following the worsening condition of her sisters health my heart once again bled for all that she has lost in her life, at the same time as being swept up in the magic and joy of the community and landscape in which she grew up. An unexpected turn occurs when a final traumatic event causes Inarys ‘sight’ to return, after a gap of some 16 years. The story then delicately weaves Inary’s mysterious ability to see and communicate with figures from the past into the plot. Rather than hitting you with a nonsensical and outlandish fantasy, the actual passages referring to her gift and how it manifest itself are beautifully crafted so as not to ‘scare’ the reader off. I’m a non-believer in anything supernatural, but at no time did I feel like snorting sceptically and chucking the book down in disgust.

As the main story unfolds and we follow Inary through her healing and regeneration I found myself laughing, crying and aching for her on more than one occasion. I was swept up in the magic of the story and found it an easy and compelling read, my mind often wandering back to the story during the day. 

The book is narrated so as you can follow individual characters thoughts and feelings from their own point of view, and rather than this leaving you a bit confused as the story jumps from person to person it gives you a great chance to experience how people view each other and how easily simple interactions within complicated relationships can be misunderstood, the chapters are mostly in chronological order, with only short time lags between entries which really helps the flow of the story despite some jumping about from character to character. 

You get some great ‘job satisfaction’ from this book, with the plot being just trixey enough to leave you feeling proud of yourself when you do work out where Daniela is heading with the story, but there is still plenty ‘beef’ left to the rest of the story to keep you gripped till the very end. 

The only slightly critical comment I would have on this book is the way in which I feel Daniela has sold herself a little short on her descriptive writing, she initially sets the scenes so well, creating a mental outline of a beautiful graphic painting... but then you find yourself left with a bit of a wishy-washy watercolour rather than the vivid oil painting you were expecting. Several times I felt like I’d been left on the brink of some beautiful writing perhaps from her fear of over complicating, or ruining the flow of the story, or maybe boring us; and I don’t think this would have been the case at all.

Although I also enjoyed the first book in this series “Watch Over Me” I found this one significantly more enjoyable, with a more meaty story and a better balance between the emotional aspects of romance, love, loss, and the environment where the story is set and the intrigue of a mystery involving Inary’s gift. Overall I felt this was a much more confident offering, and if you did enjoy Watch Over Me this one will also be enjoyed, if you weren’t sold on the first book, I’d recommend you give this one a chance as you might be more impressed.

The story concludes with your classic cheesey happily ever after, but with plenty of loose ends to leave you not only wanting more, but with plenty of scope for more in the same series, which I will look out for eagerly. 

This week I am changing direction and reading a non-fiction – Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin in preparation for my planned home birth.