Chaining Daisy by Julia Blake

If someone breaks, can they ever truly be put back together?

Book Two in the Perennials Trilogy, Chaining Daisy continues the story begun in Becoming Lili. Now adults coping with relationships, marriage and parenthood, Lili and her friends have no idea of the dark days to come.

Desperate for a baby, Daisy feels the chains of expectation tighten as her failure to conceive places an unbearable strain on her marriage, threatening to stretch her husband’s patience to breaking point.

Kevin also has problems as his feelings grow for his mysterious Ukrainian cleaner. But Kateryna is a woman with a tragic past and a secret – a secret which will change everything.

Chaining Daisy is a magnificent, sweeping story of life in all its harsh, beautiful wonder, and is a tale that will wrench at your heart and hold you spellbound until the very last page.

Amazon

Karen’s Review

Oh my goodness, this book! I was warned. Did I take notice? No. This story will make you cry; books don’t make me cry, they are just words; part of a story, right?

Wrong. When the story is good, you invest in it. That characters become real and you become part of their story.

Chaining Daisy is the second of the series. I originally resisted reading them because they are quite large. When I was looking for something to read, I wanted to go with someone I knew and had previously read. I’m a big fan of Julia Blake, who writes in different genres and lengths. Becoming Lili is a large read, but when it’s a good story,  the length doesn’t matter. My other reviews are at the bottom.

It’s available on Kindle Unlimited and the stories are based on a group of friends. It is, in fact, several stories in one as we learn about their friendships. The main character is always the title of the book. Becoming Lili, is how the friend’s circle started, and how they all came together.

In Chaining Daisy, the main character is Lili’s friend Daisy, the cousin of her husband. I was told it was a dark, and would need tissues to get me through. Daisy’s story had me choked on more than one occasion. Not just her, we also hear about Kevin’s, whose marriage lasts such a short time. There was a point I had to stop reading because my eyes were swimming with tears. Gosh it was heart wrenching!

As I was finishing the book, on the morning of my birthday, I had this pressure on my chest and felt emotional. Not because the story was sad but because out of the sadness comes joy and it made me catch my breath.

Highly recommended blockbuster of a read. If you have read it, or read it after this, leave a comment, and let’s talk books!

Becoming Lili
Lost and Found
Fixture and Fittings
Erinsmore
Lifesong