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THE DAY SHELLEY WOODHOUSE WOKE UP
Laura Pearson
Boldwood Books
April 6th, 2024
296 Pages
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I love Laura Pearson’s books so much, both I Wanted You To Know and Missing Pieces were simply wonderful and The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up is no different. Pearson always manages to tug at my heartstrings and she tackles important, tough topics in a realistic and sensitive manner. This one is about a woman named Shelley Woodhouse who wakes from a coma believing her husband has tried to kill her by pushing her down the stairs. What follows is a dual timeline of Shelley’s life from childhood to the event that landed her in the hospital.
I caught on to what was going on and going to happen pretty quickly. I don’t know if that was the author’s intention or not but I didn’t care because I enjoyed watching Shelley catch up and figure it out too. It brought so much satisfaction to this reader to see her realize how her life can still be a happy one. There is some major domestic abuse throughout the book and I liked that it showed how abuse or acceptance of it can be generational. After suffering from the abuse of her stepfather Shelley finds herself in a similar situation as her mother. Can she find the strength to leave?
The characters in this book were exceptionally well drawn out, even the side ones. I loved Granny Rose so much. She reminded me of my own grandmother because she was feisty, helpful, strong and loving. Dee was another side character I adored. Dee is Shelley’s best friend and it is of my humble opinion that everyone should have a best friend like that. Dee was always there to support and help and was always in Shelley’s corner cheering her on.
I have to point out a couple of little niggles because this would have been a five-star read for me but two things threw me off.
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD The first was Dee saying she moved out of the flat on top of the pub when she got pregnant, but then later in the book she’s just had the baby and hasn’t taken over the pub yet. It confused me. If she already had the baby when she got the pub then she couldn’t have left the flat when she got pregnant. The other thing that didn’t sit well with me was the hospital not knowing Shelley was pregnant. She has a car accident, ends up in a coma, wakes from the coma with memory loss and doesn’t miscarry…all possible. What I don’t think is possible is the hospital not doing a pregnancy test on a married woman of childbearing years. EDIT: I looked it up “National Institutes of Health (NIH) Routine pregnancy test on admission to hospital — A pregnancy test is to be done routinely on all women of childbearing age upon their admission to any hospital. I know I should just shut up and enjoy (I did love the book!) the hard work the writer put into this and I don’t mean to be picky but it bugged me a bit. END SPOILERS
That really had me shaking my head.
On a more personal note: It was really weird reading a book with a character who has the same name as me with the same spelling and the same nickname, it kind of freaked me out. Thank you Laura Pearson for spelling Shelley the correct way.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advance Readers Copy.
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