For those of you who don’t know the book, I thought it would be a good idea to post some details. The back cover blurb is as follows:

‘Be careful what you wish for…

Wife to heart surgeon and control freak, Tom, and mother to four adolescent children, Rosie feels taken for granted as she juggles family life and her work as a teacher. She longs for a change of life.

 When she hits a teenage boy with her car, her life explodes into uncharted territory. The boy is Robbie – and Rosie discovers he is part of a terrible secret that Tom has kept for seventeen years. Then Rosie is diagnosed with breast cancer.

 Rosie leaves home and begins the fight for her life. Meanwhile Tom, is forced to learn what it means to be a husband and father. He struggles to keep his family together and strives to get his wife back.’

My own experience of ovarian cancer informed Rosie’s take on the matter. Writing the parts where Rosie faces up to her diagnosis, treatment and  mortality were very hard to write. I had to dig very deep and needed a lot of encouragement from my editor to go back to that time in my life and ‘give it some wellie’ as he so delicately put it. But it was worth it and if it helps any other cancer patients in the smallest way on their own journey, then it will have been worth it.

But the book isn’t just about cancer. It’s about marriage and family life, it’s about loss and it’s about how people can change especially when pushed to extremes and most of all it’s about love and the hope that love gives us all.