Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

A heart breaking estrangement between a mother and a daughter leads to a grandmother looking on from the street to see her granddaughters for the first time. The novel takes a therapeutic look into Yoella’s life, her marriage to Meir, his affairs and her unhealthy obsession with the ins and out of Leah’s life. Filled with quotes from the novels she has read and has been influenced by, the complex nature of the mother/daughter relationship is revealed.

Thanks to Netgalley the author and publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Such a lovely novel, especially relevant having just had a daughter of my own. Beautifully written and a brilliant portrayal of family dynamics and how easily people can become estranged or miscommunicate. Reminded me of My name is Lucy Barton a lot

I received an advanced reading copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and the author Hila Blum.
I struggled to get into this story. Although gently well-written, it was hard to feel invested and involved with either the mother or the daughter. The plot was slow, long-winded and meandering, with no clear direction. Potentially not the right audience for this one. 2 stars.

Gently told but an almost cruel revealing of the ways in which the things we do in the name of our deepest love can ultimately be the undoing of us.

Reads like a memoir. Blum has created a world and lives that are startlingly present and real, and it is both raw and beautiful all at once. Astounding.


Thank you so much to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for this privilege.

Just really couldn’t get into this, couldn’t seem to get myself to particularly care about either the mother or the daughter, but very well written and translated.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

This is an excellent translation from the Hebrew, and an intriguing novel. It opens with a scene of domestic bliss, viewed through a dining room window - a couple of girls playing while their parents
prepare dinner. But the tone is voyeurisitic, and the person describing the scene is the girls’ grandmother, who “didn’t dare go any closer”. Something is clearly very wrong here, and we re set up to expect to find out what has happened as the book progresses.

But our narrator has no intention of presenting anything other than a picture of perfect parental love for her daughter Leah. She gives us vignette after vignette of Leah’s childhood and adolescence which are notable chiefly in what they don’t tell us. It is left to us to read between the lines, pick up on any clues inadvertently provided about Leah’s changing personality as she grows up, and draw our own conclusions as to what the causes may be.

I suspect every reader will bring a lot of their own experience into the conclusions they draw, particularly perhaps those of us who are daughters with somewhat fraught relationships with our mothers, or mothers who don’t understand what they did to make their daughters become distant. This is very much a masterly work made up of gaps left by a supremely unreliable narrator, enabling each reader to write their own version of the story. Interspersed throughout the narrative are slightly oblique references to literary works by novelists like Margaret Atwood and Elizabeth Strout, telling snippets of stories about women and their families, which we are left to interpret in the context of the primary narrative.

This is a very slow-burning, obsessive story of a mother recalling her love for her estranged daughter. I found it had quite beautiful intimate moments showing how close their relationship had been in the past, but a lot of the narrative was hard to link and make sense of.

As a grown woman, Leah, ostracises her mother from her life. It is clear that she has some love and respect for her father and returns home to see him just before he dies. However, she goes to great lengths to keep Yoella (her mother) out of her life. I can see that her mother's love would have been stifling, but her extreme measures to 'travel' and hide from her parents were difficult to fully comprehend; perhaps a little honesty on both sides would have been more cathartic!

Yoella's obsession with her daughter never stops and the book starts with her as an outsider, spying on the Leah's family. Yoella never stops deceiving friends and acquaintances about the nature of Leah's absence and is clearly capable of going to any length to bring her daughter home. The ending offers some potential for resolution, but I was unconvinced anything would change in their relationship and am not sure who I felt most sympathy for.

The vignettes are beautiful and haunting. The author has strong writing skills and it is evident in every paragraph. The fractures in familial relations are subtle and real. The author portrayed a mother and daughter relationship that hit close to home for me.

However, I found the book to be draining in parts, and confusing instead of multidimensional. Sometimes there were a lot of words written that weren’t saying anything.
I appreciate the subtle choices and the authors desire to show how feelings and relationships crack under the weight of every day life, but nothing major happened and I had unanswered questions at the end

I think readers who enjoy fine nuances and hints of hints will love this book. Maybe it’s message was lost on me.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion

This is a slow but detailed stroll through the relationships of an estranged mother and daughter and all the emotions that brings with it, from the mother feeling the need to save face and pretend contact is regular to the daughter, who disappears herself pretending to travel the world.
Although nothing much really seems to happen the book reveals itself in parts, with each revelation providing more insight into both the characters and the situation.
Clever and insightful.

Standing on a dimly lit street, a woman finds herself thousands of kilometers away from her homeland in Israel. Through the windows of a residence nestled in a northern Dutch city, she casts a fleeting gaze. Her attention is drawn to two young girls within, her granddaughters, unfamiliar faces yet bound by blood, the offspring of her own daughter, a relationship untouched by her presence.

Nestled within the heart of this exquisite narrative lies a compact family unit – a mother, daughter, and father – in a carefully orchestrated sequence. Over time, their well-intentioned but flawed actions coalesce, yielding an indelible psychological drama that unfurls before our eyes.

Hila Blum navigates the intricate labyrinth of a mother's affection for her daughter with a clarity and acuity that is striking. In her exploration, Blum ventures into the tender recesses of maternal love, exposing the facets we are eager to embrace alongside those we are reluctant to acknowledge. Through her intricate tapestry, she charts a private path that unveils the boundaries of our influence over our children's destinies.

Describing this work as realistic fiction is apt, for the author excels in conjuring fictitious personae and circumstances that vividly mirror our world and its complexities. The characters are conduits through which themes of growth, self-discovery, and the unyielding confrontation of individual and societal quandaries are adeptly channeled. The narrative's language possesses a clarity, succinctness, and evocative quality, effortlessly breathing life into both the environment and the individuals who inhabit it. Natural and authentic dialogues add to the narrative's authenticity, while the pacing is masterfully calibrated, alternating between tension and release to ensure reader engagement.

While the eBook commands attention, an opportunity for improvement in terms of user-friendliness surfaces. By incorporating navigational chapter links, smoothing out conspicuous word gaps, and adorning the eBook with a compelling cover design, its presentation could evolve from a document-like aspect to a more immersive reading experience. A slight deduction in my rating is warranted due to this aspect.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

I enjoyed the story of a mother and daughter’s difficult relationship and really cared about their characters but for me I wasn’t keen on the ending, it left unanswered questions. Was very sad but well written

How to love your daughter – I have asked myself that question many times hence I felt compelled to read this book. And it does not disappoint. It is a mother’s reflective and brutally honest account of all the small and big feelings and incidents that make up the fabric of the relationship between Yoella and her daughter Leah.

The reader meets Yoella spying on her estranged daughter, taking in a homely scene involving Leah’s husband and children whom she has never met. This begs the question of what happened between them, how did they get to this point? Yoella reckons that for most of us life is a journey of healing from childhood, but why did her daughter’s journey lead to this complete shut-down between them.

Yoella loves her daughter Leah who is the entire focus of her life, the mother indulges in undiluted admiration of her daughter. She reflects about the ways in which the love for our children twists and reshapes reality and knows that she was blind in seeing her daughter’s flaws. She also senses that this let Leah down but she could not help doing it time and time again. Yoella is forensic in her investigation and everything she discovers rings true.

The whole process makes Yoella think about her relationship with her own mum and she suspects that her mother, Leah’s grandmother, recognised that she was ravaging Leah with her love but never said anything and decided to look away instead. Because of what Yoella describes as the ‘straitjacket of love’, she unwittingly manipulates and creates dependencies. With hindsight she realises that everything she said to and did for Leah involved at least some degree of deception.

And it is another act of deception that will drive Leah back into her mother’s arms. For the time being anyway. Fascinating, heart breaking, utterly relatable.

I am grateful to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t write everything I want to as it would be a massive spoiler.

This book is about a mother/daughter relationship, or lack of. It was sad, emotional and heartbreaking. I must admit, I found some of it a bit much and it drained my mood a little, but that’s more a me problem than a book problem.

It would have been 5 stars if I wasn’t left with some unanswered questions, I felt the story could have extended and ended a bit further along.

This is a novel about a mother/daughter relationship told from purely the mother’s point of view. Yoella has lost touch with her daughter and spends hours reading books about mother and daughter relationships and analysing their history to try and understand why Leah has cut herself off. It a beautifully written book.

I really enjoyed this book and I’m so pleased to have found Hila Blum. Any book that quotes Anne Enright at the beginning of the first few pages is a certain success in my eyes, add the fact the novel delves into the nuances and dynamics of a difficult mother - daughter relationship and I’m all set.

The novel is written in the style of vignettes, told from the mother’s perspective, detailing the story of estrangement and the myriad of fraught complexities within the mother-daughter relationship. It’s a beautiful and painful read, I highly recommend.

I started this in bed this morning. Took it to my favourite cafe for brunch. Brought it home and lay in the sofa. Then it was over. What a book!! Unbelievable talent.