From the PR: “Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong.

Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss.

When a misguided well-wisher tells her that ‘everything happens for a reason’, she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she’d stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she’s now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son.

Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola’s seven-year-old daughter, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results…

Both a heart-wrenching portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman’s determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life-affirming and, quite simply, unforgettable read.”

I’ve gone back and forth a few times on how to tackle reviewing Everything Happens for a Reason, it’s not an easy one for me to review – simply because I haven’t read a book this emotionally powerful in some time.

The blurb gets straight to the point: Rachel’s son Luke was stillborn. The events of Everything Happens for a Reason are relayed through a series of emails from Rachel to her unborn son. It’s a brilliant concept that makes for a modern take on a diary-like nature of story by ‘instalments’ while both immersing the reader in Rachel’s world and never getting away from the heart of the story – that Rachel is writing to someone she’ll never get to really speak to.

Grief is a multifaceted, complex and uniquely personal process – while it’s inevitable that people will share common elements in their experience of loss I don’t think the world stops turning for everyone in the same way. Rachel’s loss of a baby is one that I know I’d find insurmountable and Katie Allen writes with an emotional honesty and forthright nature that’s both arresting and inviting in its openness. This book broke my heart on multiple occasions yet I could not put it down.

But then that’s probably because it also made me laugh on multiple occasions too and had me gripped throughout.

Katie Allen has written a novel that’s not only a deeply moving reflection on loss and grief but is also bloody funny at times, that’s chock full of brilliant characters and happens to be wrapped around a thoroughly compelling and clever plot that takes more than a few turns for the massively unexpected.

Everything Happens for a Reason doesn’t cover an easy subject and there are times when it’s a real heart wrench but it’s also a warm, bittersweet, hugely rewarding and brilliantly written novel.

My thanks to Karen at Orenda for my copy of Everything Happens for a Reason and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.