We've Come To Take You Home ~ Susan Gandar ~ Book Review ~ Time Slip novel

 TITLE - We've Come to Take You Home

AUTHOR - Susan Gandar

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SYNOPSIS - 

It is April 1916 and thousands of men have left home to fight in the war to end all wars. Jessica Brown's father is about to be one of these men. A year later, he is still alive, but Jess has to steal to keep her family from starving. And then a telegram arrives - her father has been killed in action.
Four generations later, Sam Foster's father is admitted to hospital with a suspected brain haemorrhage. A nurse asks if she would like to take her father’s hand. Sam refuses. All she wants is to get out of this place, stuck between the world of the living and the world of the dead, a place with no hope and no future, as quickly as possible.

As Sam's father's condition worsens, her dreams become more frequent - and more frightening. She realises that what she is experiencing is not a dream, but someone else's living nightmare...

We've Come to Take You Home is an emotionally-charged story of a friendship forged 100 years apart.

This was a time slip novel with a difference. One period was set in 1914 at the outbreak of war; the other in modern day. The difference is that whilst Sam was living in the present, she kept seeing things from the past but couldn't understand what she was seeing. Jess meanwhile was living in the past. 

I love these types of reads. It was an incredibly moving in parts and did make you think about what our young men went through during the war. 

It was good how the author blended the past and the present together . I did however get confused sometimes, as although one chapter could be in the present and the next in the past, on several occasions the two would merge in the same chapter, and I found myself having to re-read chapters, which took away some of the enjoyment. The storyline though is well thought out and was an ok read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

"I grew up surrounded by stories and storytelling.

My father, John Box, was a film production designer, working on 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Dr. Zhivago', 'The Great Gatsby', 'A Man For All Seasons' and the musical 'Oliver'. Our house was always filled with people, usually eccentric, always talented, invariably stroppy, discussing stories. My mother put my father's four Oscars to good use as toilet roll holders, doorstops and hat stands.

A major chunk of my childhood was spent loitering around on film sets. Who needs an 'English education' when you have the marble-dusted streets of downtown Moscow, ten miles outside of Madrid, to explore?

But then the years of 'Who Will Buy My Sweet Red Roses' came to a rather abrupt end. Reality knocked on the door in the guise of the Metropolitan Line to Shepherds Bush and the BBC. Working in television as a script editor and story consultant, I was part of the creative team responsible for setting up 'Casualty'. I became known for going after the more 'difficult' stories at the same time successfully racking up viewing figures from 7 to 14 million.

I went on to develop various projects for both the BBC and the independent sector. The period I enjoyed most was working with Jack Rosenthal, a wonderful writer, on the series 'Moving Story' - 'That's a situation, a good situation, but now you need to make it into a story.'

Martin, my husband, was made an offer he couldn't refuse and we left England to live in Amsterdam. 'Ik wil een kilo kabeljauw, alstublieft' will, if all goes well, buy you a piece of cod - I decided to concentrate on my writing rather than my Dutch pronunciation.

My debut novel, 'We've Come to Take You Home', set in the present and in 1918, a crossover aimed at the adult and young adult women's popular fiction market, was published March 2016."