Review: The Taste of Air by Gail Cleare

A simple phone call disrupts Nell Williams’s well-ordered life. Her mother, Mary, is in a hospital in Vermont. But her mother is supposed to be safely tucked away in an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts, so Nell can’t fathom why she would be so far from home.

After notifying her sister, Bridget, Nell hops on a plane and rushes to her mother’s side. There, she discovers that her mother has been living a second life. Mary has another home and a set of complex relationships with people her daughters have never met.

When Nell and Bridget delve deeper into their mother’s lakeside hideaway, they uncover a vault of family secrets and the gateway to change for all three women.

Ikira's Review: 4 out of 5 stars

Let me start by explaining that whilst I may have given this story 4 stars rather than 5, that's not because there was anything wrong with the story - far from it. It's because 5 stars to me is a story I adored, like one I physically can't put down and get emotionally involved with the characters, cry or laugh along with them and never want them to leave me.

I really enjoyed this story. The writing is very, very good (a must for me) and the imagery was fabulous. The characters are wonderfully believable, showing true human emotion, understanding and going about their lives in a way most of us could relate to. 

We start with Nell - a suburban housewife with her husband and children, going about her day-to-day business and seemingly quite happy. Her life is flipped upside down when her mother becomes seriously ill and she rushes to be by her side...only her mother is not where she's supposed to be. She's been escaping her assisted living home to travel and spend time on her own in a differnt state! 

Nell starts to learn little snippets of what her mother has been up to whilst she's there and it all gets a little too much so she calls of her sister; Bridget, to hurry and be with them both to see her mother and to help her get to the bottom of things. Bridget has her own issues and relishes in the ability to get away from it all for a while. When she arrives, they work together, piecing parts of the story together, learning that their mother had been living a double-life. 

There are plenty of twists and turns in the story and you eventually do learn the truth - I love that there is no major cliff-hanger leaving you wondering! In the beginning, you couldn't have guessed it all, not in a million years and that meant the story keeps you hooked well enough to want to find out but it's not entirely beyond the realm of reality. Everything that happens is entirely possible and probably even likely in the real world. I really found this to be quite refreshing. 

So, dear readers, if you like a real, true-to-reality but a nice escape from your own, then this is a perfect read for you. One you'll most likely choose to escape to time and again because it is kind, caring and soothing for your soul, not tearing it out, ripping it up and putting it back together again slowly like some of the highly emotional books which appear to be becomming the norm. Enjoy!