This Could Be Everything by Eva Rice

 

It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster for a new movie called Pretty Woman. 
 
February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.   

This Could Be Everything is the first book I have read by Eva Rice but I have heard countless rave reviews of her novel The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets so I had high hopes for this novel.

Set in the 90’s this novel brought a sense of nostalgia for me with various mentions of songs and singers from my teen years so there was an instant connection to the storyline. Our main character February Kingdom is only 19 years old and she has been through more trauma in her life than most teenagers and this has led to her closing herself off from the world and the things she enjoyed doing. Her grief is explored in such a gentle way as she learns over time to trust, forgive, love and live again.

After the initial opening chapters I did struggle a little with the first half of this book but it did pick back up again in the second half and it warmed my heart to see February begin to heal as she starts to move through the stages of grief. The tone of the book lightened towards the end of the novel and there was a touch of humour there too, with an ending that was tied up perfectly.