By My Side by Alice Peterson

 

One step can change everything...

Cass Brooks loves her job, her boyfriend Sean, her life. Until, leaving home one morning, distracted and hungover, she steps into the path of a truck. When she wakes up, she can't walk. And suddenly all her hopes and dreams, the plans she'd made with Sean, the future she thought she'd have, seem out of her reach. But then fate intervenes again. Cass meets Ticket, a loyal golden Labrador who refuses to leave her side. And on a flight to Colorado, she sits next to Charlie, who believes he can show her a life full of possibilities, if only she'll let him. Cass wants her life back the way it was. Charlie knows this cannot be. Yet a future beckons all the same...

Every so often I get a book where part of me wants to devour it in one go because it is so good but yet the other part of me really doesn’t want it to end so I constantly pick it up and put it down! This is how I felt when I was reading By My Side.

Our heroine in this book is unlike any heroine I have read before. Cass was studying medicine, enjoying life, and spending time with her boyfriend Sean. Her life takes a dramatic change after an accident leaves her wheelchair bound.

Sean breaks up with Cass and she can not bring herself to return to her course in medicine. Now she faces life in a chair and she doesn’t see a future ahead.

This book actually blew me away. Alice Peterson has always had a remarkable style of writing and she manages to engage you in the storyline, this book is written in true Alice form. By My Side sees Alice’s writing at its best.

The storyline was so detailed and realistic that it could almost have been someones diary I was reading. The author has quite clearly spent a lot of time doing her research for this book, nothing is briefly skimmed over everything is delivered in great detail.

Disabilities are usually seen as a taboo subject in fiction, usually if there is a character with a disability they are only briefly mentioned in books where as this book is unique in the fact that the whole book is based around Cass and her new friends with disabilities.

Cass soon felt like a friend. We see her go through every possible emotion as she comes to terms with her disability. She was such a warm, genuine and courageous character who you love from the first chapter.

The storyline helps to give insight not only in the day to day lives of someone who is wheelchair bound, but also things that are available to them such as activity holidays and of course Canine Partners where you can go to be paired with a helper dog.

Ticket was a great furry friend and a great addition to an already perfect book. Be sure to pick up a copy of By My Side as it is one of the best books I have read this year and also my favourite by Alice Peterson. It will have you laughing, crying and will get those brain clogs ticking.

Really this review only needed to words PURE PERFECTION.

This book is going to get our rare gem rating ( only the second one so far this year )

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