Book Review:The Songs of Us

Headline Publishing Group

For the first few chapters I did wonder at the main character, Melody.  Her behaviour is somewhat 'different'/unusual/crazy.  But when you read this book you will soon be singing in your head, if not out aloud to the songs Melody knows.  By chapter 8 I was hooked into this lady's life, her children's view and the mystery and adventure that begins with a train journey.

My heartstrings were connected to this family, the situations they found themselves in and how they interact with one another in their realistic love/hate family way that teenagers do.

The book is edgy.  Melody is on a knife's edge between sanity and insanity, between normal behaviour and being overtaken by an affliction of mental strangeness following a car accident - or is it Tourette's syndrome?  Her unstable mind takes her over uncontrollably.  Life, for short bursts of time, is embarrassing for those around her.

You will laugh, cry and resonate with quirky family traits.  Emma Cooper has written a real page-turner.  What genre is it you may ask?  It is many - saga, contemporary fiction, mystery to be solved, romance, - all wrapped up in a mother, father, teenage boy and girl family where tragedy has disrupted and scarred their lives, where love leads them to search for truth and face life and death together. 

You will find my comments too on Goodreads and Amazon.