What to say about his book...it really made me feel all kinds of emotions. I cannot believe that this gem of a book is the author's debut! The writing was so real and true to how surviving family members actually feel after a tragedy that I teared up a few times while reading it.

Laura Pearson’s book Missing Pieces is beautifully heartbreaking!
Missing pieces absolutely broke my heart from page one and made me UglyCry for sure. It starts sad and just gets sadder. We love love loved this book! It takes worlds and lives ripped apart in unimaginable ways, in ways you can’t see a way back from, and shows the perseverance and strength of spirit. Its shows whats left of a family picking up the pieces and stumbling their way ahead to find a way to keep going.
Missing pieces has two parts. Part one is where everything is heartbreakingly ripped apart and crumbles. Part two years later when the family is still trying to come to terms with the past and find a way to heal and move forward.
I can not say enough good things about this book. Laura Pearson has created a beautifully written story that breaks your heart and builds you up. Once I picked it up I couldn’t stop reading. I truly can’t wait to read more from this wonderful new author.
*WARNING: You will need tissues!

Tragic story of the consequences of losing a child and the effects the tragedy has on the whole family; even family members not yet born. It demonstrates the strength of family ties in extreme circumstances.

this isn’t the usual type of book i read but i’m so pleased i did! A family drama that explores the grief and guilt after a child dies. keep a box of tissues handy whilst reading this!

many thanks to netgalley and the publishers for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book.... I'm sobbing through this review. Is it heart wrenching? Yes! Is it tragic? Yes! Will it make you cry? Definitely? Would I recommend it? 100% absolutely!!!! The horrible events that lead to pheobe's death tore this family apart and ultimately brought them back together! I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book and will need a day to recover. It will stay with me long after this day! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This debut novel is the story of a family who are mourning the loss of their 3 year old daughter Phoebe, how they are dealing with that loss and trying to prepare for a future without her.  Tom and Linda are expecting their 3rd child when Phoebe dies and their whole world is blown apart, how will they ever get through this with another baby on the way and what will it mean for their eldest daughter Esme?

Unless you've actually experienced it first hand I don't think you can ever understand what the loss of a child can do to a family.  How are those that are left behind to pick up the pieces ever going to get over this?  They say time is a great healer, which may be true, but every one deals with the grieving process differently and there is no time frame in which a parent is expected to come out of it the other side, if they ever can!  The author dealt with this story beautifully and very sensitively and I shed a few tears whilst reading this.  The story is very well written, I was surprised to see it was a debut novel and I look forward to reading more by this author. 

I would like to thank Ipso Books for the approval and I will post my review on Goodreads and Amazon

I found this book to be so emotional. It was tough to read at times, but not because of any flaw, just such a moving story. I gladly give it five stars and will not be forgetting it anytime soon.

A beautiful, heart-wrenching debut.

‘As though you’d been sent here, loaded up with aeons of wisdom, to show us how to live’ (Missing Pieces - Laura Pearson)

This is quite simply a beautifully written debut. At its centre are a family that have been torn apart - their lives irrevocably changed. The story is told in the days after the event - resulting in a haunting portrayal of grief and how it consumes all of you.

For anyone who has lost, Missing Pieces will strike a chord deep inside them as it fully captures
that pressure in the days and months afterwards, the pressure to feel better, to be ‘normal’ even as your heart feels like it has shattered into a million pieces, missing pieces that may never be gathered up and restored.

At times this book lit me up with an inner hope, the radiance of the key characters shining from the pages. At times it made me weep at the battles they had to face to find a place in their new world.

Worthy of the highest praise this book is certain to fly. It broke me apart piece by piece and then put me back together again.

This is the heartbreaking story of a family broken by the death of a child. I really felt for Linda as she struggled with the loss of her little girl especially as she was pregnant at the time. The second part of the story is set years after the tragic events and centres on Esme and Bea's lives as adults and how they interact with their father and others. A great read.

An absorbing read, from the very beginning it dragged me in and kept me there until the very end, a heartbreaking story about a family that are torn apart after tragedy and how they somehow make it back together

A story told in two parts and I didn't realize how much I was glad to make the jump to the second half to see how this story really evolved. In the first half, we have a family that has endured a tragedy and are living not just day to day but moment to moment and at any second things could really fall apart. The reader doesn't find out what truly happened until the second half, but you don't need to know the details to know that this family is falling apart. The second half makes a huge time jump and you see the family and how each member has evolved and even how they are still stuck in things.

What a fantastic story and what a great way to tell it. I was surprised by the time jump, but it was so worth it to make the story to feel full and complete. I loved these characters and was hoping for their best from the very beginning, so it was satisfying to see them years later and see how their worlds were after many years had passed from the tragedy. The way the reader finds out the details was genius and worked so well.

I was excited to learn after reading it that this book was a debut. I love finding a new author with their first work and it adds to the excitement to see what may come next. I will be on the lookout for the next Laura Pearson, I hope it is another family drama with a lot of heart in the middle just like this one!

Gosh ! This is quite the rollercoaster- heartbreakingly sad and yet life affirming at the same time. I loved the characters, poor broken Esme, the delightful dad Tom, and Bea, the baby who came after the storm and who grew up without her mother. Phoebe is an ever present character who in 3 short years had the entire family hopelessly in love with her !

Tom, Esme and Bea all eventually resolved the sad, complex grief which engulfed them and the reader is left with a sense of hope and resolution as the past is finally laid to rest and they all move on.

A truly delicious book which deserves to be read by many

Missing Pieces, a polished and mature debut from first-time novelist Laura Pearson, is a portrait of a family paralyzed by grief after the death of three year old Phoebe. Devastated by their loss, Phoebe's mother Linda, father Tom, and sister Esme struggle to find a way forward, their grief complicated by the pending arrival of a new baby. For Linda, the passage of time represents little more than increasing distance between herself and Phoebe. Isolated and in mourning, Linda spirals deeper into depression.

Two and a half decades later, an unexpected event prompts Phoebe's surviving family members to revisit the circumstances surrounding Phoebe's death and the trauma that followed. Now in her thirties, Esme tries to find a way to capture these events for her youngest sister Bea. Will sharing long-held secrets fracture the family further, or help them find redemption?

A heartbreaking story told with insight and grace from an exciting new author.

A well written book based on how decisions can rapidly alter a family. This captures your heart and makes you feel a part of the story.

Omg wow... is all I can say about this book. I had no idea where it was going to take me and I am so glad I took a chance on this one. It pulls at your heartstrings from the very beginning. Dividing the book into two parts was an amazing idea and it pulled the story line together at the end. I loved every part of it. The characters were perfect and you felt as if you knew them from the very beginning. Definitely worth a read.

I.HAVE.NO.WORDS……ok well I will find the words to tell you how AMAZING Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson was! When I got the book the amazing people at Ipso sent me a care package of tea, tissues and chocolate. I thought it was such a cute idea but OMG I needed the tissues and then another pack and then the chocolate helped with the book hangover after I was done!
I was floored this is Laura Pearson’s debut novel! Missing Pieces is broken into two parts, the first part is the story is like the first couple months after Phoebe’s death (tissues you will need lots of tissues). The second part is around 25 years later and deals with Bea ( Phoebe’s younger sister) still dealing with her sister’s death and how it broke her family……(do yourself a favor before you one click this….one click a case of tissues)
Laura did an amazing job writing this book, she tackles a difficult story with such power and emotion! I seriously can’t wait to read more from Laura Pearson! #2018FavoriteBooks #WritesToKeepAnEyeOn

What a book! From the first chapter I was sold. Unbelievably heart breaking story about grief. 5 stars!! Get the tissues ready!!

A family torn apart by the death of one of their young children. It seems tactless to then say “I enjoyed this book”. How can you “enjoy” reading about a family dealing with such tradegy? So how do I recommend it. Well, I couldn’t put it down, in fact I read it straight through. It is written with such compassion. You really feel what each member of this family is trying to deal with in the aftermath of catastrophy. The young sister, 6, who is trying to understand, the inconsolable and heavily pregnant mother, the desperate father who is trying to hold his devastated family together. The book Is about each family member’s ability to cope - including the new baby. I turned the pages wanting to know and eventually discover the fact of what actually happened. That is why I can recommend this book.

Wow what a heartbreaking, complex, beautiful story.
The feelings of the characters jump from the pages and there’s no way to dodge them. It’s absorbs you and with each page you are hit with a different feeling. So beautifully written and is sure to leave you with a book hangover. It will take time to process the magnitude of what this family endured. Yet they didn’t completely fall apart or take a wrong turning they kept going despite it all and still loved each other. which I think it utterly important. Yes they weren’t completely untouched by it all but dealt with it in an elegant way (rightly or wrongly)
The twists and turns of the plot kept the story interesting as well as being a who done it as a side note.
I read this book in one sitting and enjoyed it despite all the heartbreak, the courage of the characters kept me turning the pages and wanting to know more.
It’s so different from other books out at the moment which is refreshing.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book, I will recommend it whole heartily.

Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson may seem like a departure from my go-to reads, namely general non-fiction or suspense novels. However, with no shame or embarrassment, I can say that in high school I was the biggest Jodi Picoult fan there ever was. My well-read copies now sit in the bottom of a few boxes, tucked away in a closet at my mom's house--as is most of my teenage book collection. Missing Pieces felt like a Jodi Picoult novel--in the sense that everything surrounding family, relationships and love, with some traumatic and devastating twist, of course. I could be wrong, but I think that's pretty high-praise for Pearson's first novel!

Missing Pieces explores a family trying to pick up the pieces after the devastating loss of one of their daughters, Phoebe. Linda, the mother, is also pregnant with the family's third daughter and is seen trying to navigate her guilt for losing Phoebe, while trying to find a place in her grief to welcome and love a new daughter. Told in a split-narrative, the novel also cuts to Bea, the third daughter, in adulthood, as she tries to navigate the loss that seemed to fill her childhood and the sister she never knew. Ultimately, readers see how differently grief can manifest, how guilt can impact your life, and how a family moves through their relationships with one another. 

Like I mentioned, this was a bit of a departure from the type of books I have been reading in the last few months. However, I immediately requesting it on NetGalley after seeing the author interact with a few #BookBloggers on Twitter. Where some authors only rely on their publisher, with little thought or attention to the masses that read (and review!) their work, Pearson seemed seemed genuinely kind and interested in what bloggers had to say; and, when she mentioned this was her first novel, I was eager to support that and read it! Ultimately, Missing Pieces is devastatingly beautiful. You get characters you empathize with, realistic family and romantic relationships to explore, and an enticing story about how grief and guilt can be long and lingering.