"The love we give away is the only love we keep."

--Elbert Hubbard

Sheer Abandon, a number-one book from one of the most well-known authors in Britain, is a gripping tale of what happens when someone acts in desperation.

Synopsis from Goodreads...

Martha, Clio, and Jocasta meet by chance at Heathrow airport in 1985 as they are starting off on separate backpacking adventures, and they decide to spend the first few days of their trips together in Thailand. When they go their separate ways, they vow to get together in London the following year. But many years pass before the three cross paths again, and the once-capricious, carefree girls now all have thriving careers. One of them, however, harbors a terrible On her return from her pre-college excursion, she abandoned her just-born daughter at Heathrow.

Clio has fulfilled her ambition of becoming a doctor, only to find herself trapped in a marriage to an arrogant surgeon who belittles her and her professional achievements. Martha is a highly paid corporate lawyer, just embarking on a political career. Dedicated to her job, she has had little time for personal relationships and lives a busy, but lonely life. Jocasta, a tabloid newspaper reporter with an infallible instinct for the big story, is in love with a charming colleague who can’t make the permanent commitment she longs for. The infant abandoned at Heathrow has grown up under the loving care of her adoptive family. Now a beautiful teenager named Kate, she sets out to find her birth mother—a quest that unexpectedly brings the women together and exposes the secret buried so many years before.

My reaction from this novel...

I have never read a book by this author before, so I'm not sure what to anticipate. I noted that the author reveals essential information early in the book. The manner of writing didn't appeal to me. Characters are introduced by the author in a pretty sudden manner. This would probably be OK if there was anything fascinating going on. However, nothing exists. It was similar to reading a lengthy narrative and wondering when it would finish.

I also felt that this book took me a long time to read, and I felt that it was longer than necessary—it could have been 300 pages, but instead it was 627 pages long. I became very irritated with the characters' frequent character changes—sometimes you would only read a paragraph before going on to the next one—and I didn't really enjoy the character development, particularly Clio and Jocasta. The first three chapters got off to a good start, with Kate getting to know Martha, Clio, and Jocasta before the key plot point—who was Kate's biological mother—was revealed. After that, things took a turn for the worst as they discussed historical accounts and current issues.

To be honest, I only feel like reading thick or long books sometimes, so the last time that I felt that way, I immediately chose this one because I was really excited since it was my first time reading a book by this author, but in the end, I was really disappointed. I got bored because it was so long but the story was flat. It would have been better if there were twists and turns in the story, unlike this one which was predictable. It would probably be better to focus on a few characters rather than having many characters and including each of their points of view.

For me, it's not highly recommended because I really got lazy reading it and was tempted to skip some pages because it's long and boring, like there's nothing in it. Maybe it's better if you're going to read a story this long, it should be in the thriller genre because that's more interesting.

My Overall Rating: ⭐⭐(2/5)