This is a book that grabbed my attention from the start and kept me on edge throughout. There is so much going on in the book and story, a lot of drama, emotion, tension and of course family dynamics. There are twists and turns and the characters are all have there own personalities which come through on the pages of this book.

Intriguing, interesting and a book you can't stop reading. A great read.

Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I have to be honest, I found this book a dark and gloomy read. Although it’s ultimately about healing, its portrayal of a woman teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown was tough going at times. I was grateful for the wonderful character of Margaret, who had her own heartbreaking troubles but whose ironic sense of humour provided some lighter moments.
Enya is an interesting character, a respected GP with a selfish husband and mother of a teenaged boy. She’s struggling with grief and anxiety, the impending breakup of her marriage, and guilt at having an affair. Caught in a maelstrom of paranoid anxiety, she takes dramatic action to try to put her life back on track and do the right thing, all the while terrified that she’s going to either die at 47 or outlive her mother.
I’m not sure if I would recommend this book to others, but it is very well written and memorable. I think a reader would have to be feeling pretty strong to tackle it, though. I’m left needing something light and funny to lift my mood after finishing it.

Unfortunately DNFd this. It lacked substance and was very slow with no clear direction of the plot. I loved her earlier work but this is not worth reading in my opiniom

It took me a while to read this book. I found it difficult to get into the storyline as I found it too drawn out. However , it was well written and I am sure it will appeal to a wide audience but it was just not for me.

This really wasnt what I was expecting - it was so much better. I really enjoyed the cultural element to the story, the fear that being alone can create and also how sometimes poeple just arent really what you expect or how they present themselves.

This book has it all, whodunnit (I got it wrong), family drama, and starting over all with the backdrop of a rag tree.

Its a brilliant read for a rainy winter day

After saving the life of a hit and run victim, Dr Enya Pickering finds herself gradually falling to pieces.

Approaching the age her beloved mother died and struggling with a loveless marriage and a distant son, she makes the decision to start afresh in Abbeydooley.

However, Enya finds herself continuing to unravel as she tries to accustom herself to a small village with set ways, miles from her sister and her son.

Her rented property is dominated by a rag tree, an old superstition of tying rags to a tree as a healing ritual, which she gradually begins to appreciate and understand. Enya herself can’t begin to heal until she confesses her sins and faces her demons.

A reliable narrator would make it easier to sympathise with Enya’s downward spiral. I also didn’t engage particularly with the motif of Enya’s mother’s writings, although I appreciated the folklore referred to. Deeply set in the heart of Ireland but not as powerful as Ahern’s middle works.

Enya is a GP and she finds herself performing CPR on a young teenage boy in the pouring rain.

This one act has a profound reaction on her life but she is still obsessed by what happened that night and finds it difficult to move on.
Can she find the courage to face herself.

Was interesting to read in the authors notes this is the 20th book for her publisher in 20 years, no small feat

It is a long time since I have read a book by this author but knew I had enjoyed the ones I had read some years before

This book is set in Ireland and is a whodunit mixed with a touch of mystical and featuring family drama…there is a lot going on but it is held together well and manages to create a good atmospheric story that even though at times almost reaches fanciful manages to pull itself back and continue on strongly

It centres around events on a stormy night and what really did happen as Dr Enya Pickering came across a hit and run and saved the victims life….and when she randomly moves to a remote village that desperately needs a GP what is the mysterious ‘cloth tree’ that taps her window nightly and causes her such fear and anxiety

A robust cast of strong characters including Margaret the gruff no nonsense ‘Management Agent’, Xander ( Enya’s hubby ) and Finn ( Enya’s son )

Talented author, strong descriptive writing, and a surprisingly shock ending all made this a worthwhile read

Cecelia Ahern has written another great book. An unusual one with twists and turns to which she's added lots of Irish folklore. It's a kind of 'story within a story' book. As Enya, a GP, approaches the age at which her mother died she begins to question her own mortality. This, the breakdown of her marriage and the aftermath of a terrible storm all contribute to her life unravelling. Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an early read of 'Into the Storm'.

I was drawn into the story right from the start and wanted to know what was going to happen. I didn’t see some of the plot twists coming so it did keep me very engaged. I did find some of the articles by her mum quite heavy going and wasn’t sure of their value. But overall a very enjoyable read with some excellent characters, especially Margaret.

I’m always a bit dubious upon reading a Cecilia Ahern book as they can be hit or miss. The last one was really good and so that’s why I tried this one.
Sadly it wasn’t for me and I gave up around 70 pages in, it was lacking in everything. Bland characters and a hocus pocus airy fairy plot. It might have picked up further on, but I haven’t the patience to keep going with a book I’m forcing myself to read.
Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins UK for the ARC in return for an honest review.

I stayed up (very) late two nights in a row just to keep reading. Enya is a flawed but very human character, and I’ve enjoyed reading her story immensely. Although I guessed some parts, that’s not to say the story is predictable.

I think the style of this novel is quintessentially Cecelia Ahern - very readable and not the sort of story to get bogged down in.

During a stormy night in December, local GP Enya saves the life of a young boy who has been hit by a car and left in the road. The boy reminds her of her own son, Finn, and the incident acts as a catalyst, making her face up to problems in her marriage to fellow GP, Xander. When an opportunity comes for her to relocate to a small village as a rural GP she decides this could be just what she needs to get a handle on her life again so she packs up and leaves her husband and son behind. But everything isn’t quite what it seems; she can’t stop thinking about the young boy she saved and is haunted by the choices she’s made as well as the local rag tree.

“Into The Storm” is due to be published on 10 October and I was very happy to be approved for an eArc via NetGalley in exchange for this honest review.

I have been a fan of Cecelia Ahern since her very first book and I’ve loved seeing how her writing has grown and changed over the years.

This book is definitely up there with some of her best. I really liked the mystery element that Ahern brought into this one.

A lot of Ahern’s previous books have contained a bit of a magical element and this one does keep that but in quite a realistic way with the use of folk magic and the legends of rag trees and how people benefit from them.

The link back to Enya’s Mum was really well done and I loved reading the articles she’d written and getting an idea as to the kind of woman she was and how that will have affected her children.

Ahern’s writing has such a nice flow and I always find myself just completely immersed in her stories. There are some really fab characters in this one as well and the mystery element was very well done.

My one complaint would be that the ending felt a little rushed. It’s not an overly long book so could have stood to be a little longer and given a bit more time to flesh the ending out a little more.

Overall though I loved it.

I have read many Cecelia Ahern books in the past and couldn’t wait to read this. I found this quite slow initially to get in too but overall this was a good read with many levels and topics explored.

Set in rural Ireland, Dr Enya is travelling through a storm when she is stopped at the scene of an accident of a teenage boy where she performs CPR.
The book follows the breakdown of Enya’s life and relocation to rural Ireland.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for the ARC.

4-4.5 stars

I do love a new Cecelia Ahern book and this one sounded so fabulous.

Her writing in this is exceptional. For me, she's the epitome of what every writer aspires to be. If you're in a creative writing lesson and you're told to create characters, create weather, describe emotions - the perfect thing to come out of it would be the equivalent of her work (that made more sense in my head than it does written down but hopefully you know what I mean). For me, she has perfected every aspect of storytelling.

The opening scene which takes place in torrential rain and thunder is so vivid that I forgot it was a book, and I was expecting my dog to come in from the garden looking like a drowned rat, and it almost startled me that it wasn't actually raining.

Enya is an interesting character, clearly suffering from grief, and possibly something else. She feels alone even when she's surrounded by others and she has lost her way amongst her grief and being a GP and a wife and a mother - she's lost her self. And her husband, Xavier, is a vile man. He was so rude and creepy straight away and I didn't trust him from then on and I felt Enya deserved so much better than him.

It isn't always a happy book, there are some difficult topics, such as dysfunctional families, second marriages, regrets, jealously, love, motherhood, shock, loss, mental health, infidelity, mortality, ageing.

There is nothing wrong with her writing - as I explained earlier about how exquisite it is. The characters, whilst not always good people, were complex and rough and not always comfortable to read about. There is this really clear sense of space and time.

But I will say, that it dipped slightly in the middle. The opening was so spectacular and got you straight into it, and the ending was satisfying. The middle is still good, don't get me wrong, but I felt it dipped somewhat in intensity and I found myself hoping that more of the start would appear, but that's a minor thing.

There isn't a whole lot of plot, this is definitely more of a character exploration and I prefer that in a book. It's not always an uplifting, positive, cheerful character exploration and some are nicer than others, but it is thoroughly done and is very well achieved.

As someone who has suffered from her fair share of grief and mental health struggles, it can be almost impossible to actually explain, to put into words, how it can make you feel. But I think Cecelia has done it in such a sensitive and realistic way; she's not hidden from troubles or swept them under the rug, but nor has she hyped them up for explicit entertainment values. It's there front and centre and you really feel for Enya.

Overall, whilst there was a tiny dip towards the middle, I'd say this is probably my favourite book of hers so far (granted I haven't read them all). It's not overly uplifting, and some of it is hard to read emotionally, but Cecelia has written a powerful story about love, loss, grief, and what it feels like to be out of control of your self, your mind, your future. With interesting and well written, but not always pleasant, characters, it's full of emotion. It is definitely going to be another winner for her.

I have enjoyed many previous novels by Cecilia Ahern so I was very excited to be given the opportunity by Net Galley and the publisher to read this latest one in advance of its publication.
It didn’t disappoint and I found it well written with characters that I cared about. It was sad in parts but I couldn’t put it down and throughly enjoyed it.

This is only the second Cecelia Ahern book I've read but she's an auto buy author for my mum, so I thought I'd give this book a go.

I went into this not really knowing what to expect but I thought the concept sounded interesting. I found this really easy to read, I flew through it. However, there were moments where I was confused but now that I think about it, that might have been intentional since Enya is scatty and unreliable. I really enjoyed the Irish lore woven through this. I also loved the female dynamic and the conversation around getting to the age your parents where when they died. Its something I've spoken about in real life but not something I've read about before.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this and I'll be buying it for my mum when its released.

Good enough to not dnr but I'm not sure if I would recommend. Cecelia Ahern is one of my favourite authors - some of her stories are just fun others a little bit outlandish and then others that are thought provoking. I'm not sure where to categorise this one. It's about a mothers love and a mothers death. The impact they have on the individual and those around them. It's well written and the characters are all well developed apart from one. The husband. He was just so annoying.

Thank you to netgalley for this ARC.
I'd like to give this a 3.5

Margaret was the best character in this book
I loved the beginning and the end but got a little bored in the middle and never really wanted to pick the book up while reading the middle part
Such a shame as I’ve loved this authors other books

Book Review: Into the Storm

I recently finished Into the Storm by Cecelia Ahern, and I can confidently say it’s one of those rare books that grips you from the very first page and doesn’t let go. Ahern’s storytelling is immersive and poignant, and this novel showcases her talent beautifully.

The story follows GP Enya, who finds herself at a pivotal moment during a wild December night while performing CPR on a teenage boy. This traumatic event becomes a catalyst for Enya, forcing her to confront her stagnant life and loveless marriage. I felt her desperation and determination so acutely; it was impossible not to root for her.

As she seeks refuge in a remote country town, I was drawn into her journey of self-discovery and healing. Ahern's depiction of Enya's emotional struggles is powerful and relatable, making me reflect on my own life choices and the courage it takes to change them. The symbolism of the ancient tree, a silent witness to countless stories, resonated deeply with me and served as a beautiful metaphor for growth and resilience.

Ahern's characters are undeniably flawed, yet incredibly magnetic. Enya’s vulnerability and strength are portrayed with such nuance that I felt a genuine connection to her. The supporting characters are equally compelling, each bringing their own depth to the narrative.

The book balances tension and introspection perfectly. While I was invested in the mystery of Enya's past, the emotional weight of her journey kept me turning pages late into the night.

Overall, Into the Storm is a masterful blend of emotional depth and gripping storytelling. It’s a book that not only entertained me but also left me reflecting on its themes long after I turned the last page. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a heartfelt and thought-provoking read.