The Day She Came Back

By Amanda Prowse

I’m not sure how I feel about this book, as I did and didn’t enjoy it. There are a few funny moments tinged with a lot of sadness and anger. I can understand the main character being angry at the death of her grandmother. Who brought her up. Along with the anger of finding out that throughout her 18 years of life, what she was told and lead to believe about her family was a lie.

The character was finding it hard to comprehend what she had been told and what actually turned out to be the truth. In real life anyone would go through a huge mixture of feelings and the author portrayed this very well. For me however the part I enjoyed the most in the book was the epilogue, when we found ourselves ten years down the line.

Victoria is 18 years old, she lives with her elderly grandmother Prim. Who is the only family that she has. Her mother passed away when she was a baby, due to her being a drug addict. Prim and even her grandfather kept to this story until he passed away when Victoria was 9.

One day Victoria goes out with her best friend Daksha and as they are leaving Prim asks her to bring a balaclava when she meant a baklava. When Victoria gets home she finds Prim in her favourite chair in the garden room, she is slouched with blank looking eyes. Victoria realised that her grandmother has passed away. She contacts Daksha and she and her parents turn up to help her. Daksha’s father is actually Prim’s GP.

Daksha and her family do all they can to help and support Victoria and when she finally goes back home Daksha stays with her. On the day of Prim’s funeral Victoria is still in shock and is basically just going through the motions. After the funeral they all go back to Victoria’s for the wake. When she spots a woman out by the lake. She goes out to see if she can help her. The woman somehow looks a little bit familiar but she can’t understand why. The woman is called Sarah and she drops a huge bombshell that sets Victoria spiralling a bit out of control. She says that she’s Victoria’s mother!

She asks the woman to prove who she says she is. With all of this Victoria doesn’t know what to do, her mind is constantly going over everything she grew up knowing and what Sarah has told her. She meets up with a boy she went to school with and they hook up with each other. Flynn isn’t the right guy for Victoria, but she can’t see that until he persuades her to have a party at her house.

Daksha isn’t impressed about the party, plus she can’t go anyway as her mother is taking her to see family. Besides Daksha and Victoria have had a bit of a falling out due to the way Victoria is treating Daksha along with doing things she wouldn’t normally do.

The party ends up being a disaster. Victoria gets drunk, people are abusing the house. She ends up hiding in the larder being sick in to a boot. When she realises she needs to find Flynn. However when she does find him, he’s in Prim’s bed having sex with another girl. She wishes that Daksha was there to help her get rid of everyone, but she wasn’t there. So she called on the only other person that said she could count on him day or night, Prim’s companion Gerald.

Gerald turns up and starts to get everyone out, except Flynn as he starts mouthing off at Gerald. So Gerald pulls out his father’s pistol from WWII and threatens them all if they don’t leave now. Unbeknown to everyone the pistol was decommissioned after the war.

The next day everyone rallies around Victoria and they get the house back to how it should be. All of them in their own way tell Victoria that she can’t carry on acting like this, and what would Prim think of her? They all agree that she needs to sit down with Sarah and discuss the reasons and why Prim told her that her mother was dead.

Victoria goes over to Norway to see Sarah as she’s been living there for many years now. Hoping she’ll get all of the answers she’s looking for. Her time in Oslo is tiring, upsetting and very emotional. She doesn’t know how she feels one minute to the next it’s like she’s on a rollercoaster. Sarah says that she hopes one day they will be able to meet half way and build up a strong relationship.

We eventually jump 10 years into the future where life for Victoria has changed so much. I can’t tell you anymore about her future as I don’t want to spoil it for you. As this was my favourite part of the book.

Pages: 320, Publication Date: 7 July 2020. My Rating: