Review: The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Title: The Life She Was Given
Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: July 25, 2017
Edition: Kindle (304 pages)
Genres:

• Fiction
• Adult
• Mystery

The Life She Was Given by Ellen Marie Wiseman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Lilly Blackwood has been denied so much. She is locked in an attic bedroom, and never allowed downstairs. Her only contact with the outside world is the little she can see from the window of her room. Then, one night her mother comes to her room and tells her they are going to the circus. But, instead of going as spectators, Lilly is sold to the circus owner. Despite everything, she builds a life there. Makes friends. Falls in love. Gets married.

Skip ahead twenty years. Julia Blackwood has grown up in the same house where Lilly was kept in the attic room. She has now inherited her childhood home on the deaths of her parents, conditional upon her living there. Julia is troubled by her difficult childhood, and she finds clues that lead her to believe she has or has a sister. Eventually, she has to come face-to-face with devastating family secrets.

This book is definitely not light reading. The intensity of it caused me to want to stop reading several times. Yet, I felt compelled to read on and learn the truth of the Blackwood family secrets. In the final analysis, that very intensity of characters in struggle caused me to come away appreciating this book a great deal.