However, I had a feeling that the story, all the feelings and emotions are a bit over the top. It was a bit overdone and the characters' behaviour was too extreme, to over the top. Another absolutely gorgeous book by the best selling author Lucy Diamond. Oh how I loved this precious book. Everyone is keeping secrets and the thing about secrets is that they will all be revealed in the end. The book centres around how each family member copes with grief after loosing Leni to a tragic accident. You’d think that would make for a miserable or maudlin story, but not a bit of it! There’s humour, love, excitement and joy in The Best Days of Our Lives too so that, while the reader needs a tissue or two along the way, the overall sensation is of a fabulous, uplifting, and life affirming experience.

I’ve never read anything from Lucy Diamond before, but I’m definitely going to dive into her previous work. If they’re half as good as The Best Days of Our Lives, I’m going to read a Collection of Greatness. Through the novel we follow the four people closest to Leni, her mum Belinda, father Tony and sister and brother Alice and Will. Each is dealing with their grief in very different ways throughout the story. The way Diamond weaves each characters stories throughout works so well. Never do you feel lost or confused by what is happening. 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. Diamond’s analogies of the butterfly having to fight it’s way out if it’s chrysalis and the way a river will learn to flow around a pebble we’re absolutely beautiful ways to explore how we might move forward after tragedy. I know Tony the father is to be seen as the bad guy but he really isn’t. He has improved the most throughout.

I had a problem with Leni, though, because the picture of her, painted by the characters, was totally different to this what the author showed us in the first chapter. I didn't like her too much, to be honest. The story, on the whole, was very character driven and the author did a good job with describing them, yet I still think that Leni was really the weakest link and I'm guessing it shouldn't be like this, I was supposed to like her and because I didn't, well, the whole story was already from the beginning spoiled for me.

Every Friday Mercy Hamilton goes to the same supermarket. She doesn’t go to buy groceries, instead, she shows a fading photo of a little girl to anyone who’ll look – begging for help to find her daughter. One Friday, Erica Fielding comes across Mercy, and touched by her story, Erica agrees to help. As Erica is drawn deeper and deeper into Mercy’s life, she discovers there is no record of Mercy’s daughter. In fact, there’s no record of a child at all. But who is the girl in the photo if not Mercy’s missing daughter? And what danger will Erica find herself in by pursuing the truth? This is a story about a family who are heartbroken over the death of a daughter/sister who died tragically on a bike accident. And Tony Lenis dad is trying to make amends for leaving the family and being a rubbish dad. While awaiting a new baby himself with his new girlfriend.I guarantee that anyone reading The Best Days of Our Lives will find it hugely relatable and take solace, pleasure and joy from it. Reading this one might just inspire you to try something new in your own life. This was a beautiful story that contained so much heart and lightness amongst its tragedy, such is the skill and warmth of Diamond’s writing. Its characters were written with depth and real humanity and as such their grief was raw and palpable and yet this is a novel that still manages to leave you uplifted by the end. Where I’m most conflicted though, is in regards to the character of Leni. We know that she dies early doors (no spoiler - it’s right there in the synopsis), but there’s not real transformation from her being there to not. And part of me would like more depth to her character and more of her story, rather than the drip feeding we get. On the other hand, the main crux of the story lies on her sister, Alice, trying to uncover the last weeks of Leni’s life, and by keeping us in the dark too, it puts us on the same journey, so I can understand why it’s written like that, but it doesn’t stop me wanting more. Mental health care postcode lottery has to end’ as suicide is now leading cause of death for new mums

Margot Robbie stars as the eponymous fashion doll in this live-action adventure directed by Greta... Overall, a very tear jerking read with some happiness added in for good measure. I thoroughly enjoyed it.Hive Store Ltd 2020. (hive.co.uk) is registered in England. Company number: 07300106. VAT number: 444950437. This is a story about sister Alice finding out about Leni’s last few weeks of her life and she discovers that Alice didn’t know everything about her sister than she thought she did. It is also about them coming to terms with Leni’s death and getting over the grief and living life to the fullest as Leni would have wanted her family to be. Lucy Diamond's books are always a great read in the family-drama type genre, and this was no exception.

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.

Humour, love, excitement and joy

Digital Reads A Curse For True Love : the thrilling final book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series Everyone blamed themselves in their own way for Leni's death, even though it was no-one's fault. The only one who annoyed me was Alice, as what Leni was up to in her last days consumed her to the point of obsession and took over her whole life. Tender, bittersweet and funny, Lucy Diamond is brilliant about love in all its guises’ Veronica Henry