A Life Unraveled by Jill Hannah Anderson ~ a Review

by Susan Roberts

"As soon as everyone left the room, that fear pushed me to reach for my savior and new best friend - the patient controlled analgesia IV pain pump." (loc473)

Amazon affiliate links are used on this site. A Free book was provided for an honest review.

March 2022; Red Adept Publishing
ebook (316 pages); women's fiction

I decided to read a few chapters of this new book before I went to bed.  Once I started reading it I couldn't put it down and it kept me up way past my normal bedtime.  This book grabbed me on the first page and kept me from paying attention to anything but the story.  It's a story of a loving family facing an attack that changes their lives and how they cope with the changes.

Lily and her husband, Luke, are happily married and have three children.  She feels that her life is perfect - not only does she have a loving family but she also loves her job as a kindergarten teacher.  She tries to run every day and one Saturday morning she is attacked and assaulted by another runner - a young man that she's seen before during her runs.  The attack is brutal and she ends up in the hospital with a myriad of physical problems.  When a detective visits her, she is able to help identify her assailant.  Much to everyone's surprise, the assailant was a popular high school football player who has led this team to the playoffs in recent years.  

The trauma of her injuries and her pain, make her begin to rely on pain killers when she gets home.    A near family tragedy makes her decide to get sober but her life is still turned upside down because she starts having memory lapses and making some bad decisions which causes her family to begin to lose their trust in her.  They are very skeptical of her feeling that she is being followed and that someone is out to get her. Is someone trying to cause the destruction of her family life or is she responsible and taking drugs again?    

Basically, the novel is about the changes in a family when someone deals with a life-threatening incident.  The characters are very well written -- faults and all - and the plot is tense throughout the entire novel. I was pulling for Lily's recovery from the beginning of the book but then I began to question her sanity.  Luke was a saint and the kids were justifiably worried about mom.  It got to the point, that I wasn't sure who to trust and who was telling the truth.  

This is a tremendous book.  It's full of roller-coaster twists and turns when you don't know who to believe with an ending that I didn't see coming.  My advice is to clear your calendar before you read the first page because you won't want to put it down once you've started it.   This novel is about family, love, forgiveness and is a great mystery.  I have read all of this author's books and she just keeps getting better.  I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Buy A Life Unraveled at Amazon

Susan Roberts lives in North Carolina with her husband of over 50 years.  She grew up in Michigan but now calls North Carolina home. She enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with her family. She reads almost anything (and the piles of books in her house prove that) but her favorite genres are Southern fiction, women's fiction, and historical fiction. Susan is a top 1% Goodreads Reviewer. You can connect with Susan on Facebook.

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