Originally told through six days in Ivy’s life, this book takes the reader on a journey of life and loss. Initially the writing style was a little difficult for me to comprehend but as the book carried on it became easier to lose myself in the beauty and lightness of the writing. Ivy’s life takes on many twists on turns, from pre WWII to just before the 2000s. We follow her as she grieved, finds love, loses love and finds herself. I really enjoyed this form of storytelling that put focus on these six days in her life. By the end of the book I felt attached to Ivy, I had been following her life since she was 19 and I almost didn’t want to leave her. This was emotionally charged and full of gorgeous quotes and relationships, a real reflection of life and all of its complications.

4+ ⭐

I was a bit misty eyed by the end of this.
Six days with Ivy, and yet I felt I knew her so well.
Admittedly, six very important days.
We start with a fairly ordinary family Easter, lunch and from there I was hooked.
Pulled on my heart strings a fair few times.

Six days of Ivys young life at the start of the War is intense as much as it's tragic.

Ivy is spending time with her family, who are rather free and easy about life when tragedy strikes and wordls and lives are changed forever.

This book is a great read. it is a slow burn but oh how I loved it.

The author is a good storyteller and I felt all emotions and gasped at times at what happened next.

Not what i expected at all but I like when a book surprises me..

I loved both The End We Start From and The Harpy making me keen to read Megan Hunter’s new novel which tells the story of Ivy, the daughter of a bohemian family, through six pivotal days in her life beginning with Easter Sunday in 1938 which ends in tragedy.
Nineteen-year-old Ivy wakes to what she expects to be a special day. Her beloved brother Joseph has invited the woman with whom he’s in love to stay and Ivy is eager to meet her. At a funeral, two weeks later she finds solace with a man much older than herself which will lead to marriage and children. Towards the end of the war, a friendship ripens into a love that might fulfil her longing for meaning, hopes dashed ten years later on a day in which she experiences an epiphany pointing her to another way of life. On the sixth day, Ivy remembers the many Easters she has lived through and the course her life has taken, understanding that her quest for meaning has been fulfilled.
Ivy’s story is unfolded from her own perspective although not in her own voice which suits this woman cast as an observer on the edges of a colourful family caught up in their own lives, unsure of her own place in the world. Hunter’s writing is luminously beautiful at times and there’s an elegiac quality to the early part of the novel which lends it a gentle melancholy. Throughout it all, Ivy remains haunted by the tragedy of 1938, unsure to the end if she might have played a part in it. Looking at other reviews, I see that some readers found Hunter’s novel unsatisfying, but I loved it, partly its structure suited it well but mostly for its quietly gorgeous writing.