The Best Days of Our Lives: the big-hearted and uplifting new novel from the bestselling author of Anything Could Happen

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Shortly after her 35th birthday, Lina is out riding at night when she's knocked off her bike and instantly killed by a passing car. You are desperate to get to know her and to read things from her perspective but you know this can’t occur but the further the story develops you do get a sense of who she was and how integral she was to the family and how loved she was.

It’s grieving to the fullest, following all stages from denial to coming to terms to their new reality. The story is punctuated with various people's reminiscences of her from a tribute page set up by her sister, and these were fun to read.I think because at this point things started to happen and the secrets and issues that each person had been hiding started to come to the fore. However we learn a lot about Leni through the memories of her family and friends so she’s never far away from centre stage. This is a story about grief, love and healing and as such the journey the family goes on is very special and yet also difficult. What follows are chapters from each family’s members viewpoint, her sister Alice, her brother Will, her mother Belinda and her father Tony. By the end though everyone had slowly worked through their grief and guilt and come out the other side as a much closer family, which was really nice to see.

Belinda and Tony had split up many years ago and had different partners, Tony having had more than one significant other over the years, but now currently settled with a younger partner who is pregnant, so he's about to become a dad again. I started this book with a lot of hope that I would enjoy it, Lucy Diamond is an author that I usually enjoy reading. The Prologue rather cleverly leads you to believe that one of the sisters will be the main character throughout the narrative, but in the first twist within the first couple. Everyone is keeping secrets and the thing about secrets is that they will all be revealed in the end. Set over the course of one life-changing year, The Best Days of Our Lives is a warm, big-hearted and poignant story, full of hope, heartache and love.Set over the course of one life-changing year, The Best Days of Our Lives is a warm, big-hearted and poignant story, full of hope, heartache and love – the perfect gift this Christmas.

Belinda, Leni’s mum, develops an unhealthy, yet comforting relationship with a clairvoyant, while Tony, Leni’s dad, is getting ready to become a father for the fourth time all over again after three failed marriages. A bittersweet ode to the highs, the lows, and all the shades of living in between, The Best Days of Our Lives is Lucy Diamond at her absolute best.This is a masterpiece in how broken people negotiate and ultimately survive the worst that life can throw at them. Belinda finds comfort in her many conversations with a telephone clairvoyant who is able to speak to her daughter and pass messages back from beyond the grave.

I loved the idea of sharing memories with Leni’s friends and family - and although raw at the beginning they became a real source of comfort. She feels she didn’t know Leni in her last few weeks of life and so when she finds her diary with some unusual entries she sets about learning more. This was the catalyst for Alice starting some self-healing but really can we ever truly reach that end point in relation to this especially when all we want is that person back in our lives?And part of me would like more depth to her character and more of her story, rather than the drip feeding we get. Meanwhile their dad Tony who has become somewhat alienated from his children since his divorce from their mum Belinda has a new baby on the way, and at his age, well, he wonders if he can start all over again. I love books by Lucy Diamond and this one was just as good as the others I’ve read, with lots of characters to keep you interested. Although the stories are fiction, they are still someone's imagining of how a situation would play out if they were in the midst of it. I received an advance review copy for free thanks to NetGalley and Quercus and I am leaving this review voluntarily.