Blog Tour - The Love Child by Rachel Hore

A young mother's sacrifice. A child's desperate search for the truth . . .
London, 1917

When nineteen-year-old Alice Copeman becomes pregnant, she is forced by her father and stepmother to give up the baby.  She simply cannot be allowed to bring shame upon her family. But all Alice can think about is the small, kitten-like child she gave away, and she mourns the father, a young soldier, so beloved, who will never have the chance to know his daughter.
 
Edith and Philip Burns, a childless couple, yearn for a child of their own. When they secretly adopt a baby girl, Irene, their life together must surely be complete. Irene grows up knowing that she is different from other children, but no one will tell her the full truth.
 
Putting hopes of marriage and children behind her, Alice embarks upon a pioneering medical career, striving to make her way in a male-dominated world. Meanwhile, Irene struggles to define her own life, eventually leaving her Suffolk home to find work in London.
 
As two extraordinary stories intertwine across two decades, will secrets long-buried at last come to light?
 
Brilliantly evoking the changing attitudes of the time, The Love Child is a novel about love, family, separation, despair and hope, full of tenderness and deep feeling.

'The Love Child' is Rachel Hore's latest release and I am pleased to be taking part in Random Things blog tour to celebrate its publication.

I really enjoyed 'The Love Child'. It is a historical fiction read which begins in 1917 and one of the main characters, Alice, becomes pregnant while unmarried. As was the norm at the time her parents forced her to give the baby away and become resigned to never seeing her baby again. I really enjoyed learning about this time and the unwritten rules around unmarried mothers to be and the power of the parents in persuasion, when Alice was very vulnerable and unable to communicate her wishes and live her life as she wished. It was heart-breaking and I really felt for Alice. However Alice took her life in her own hand and studied to become a doctor and forged a very successful career in a male dominated world.

The second storyline within the book is about Irene, Alice's baby, who was adopted by a couple. Irene was not told that she adopted and this had an effect on her growing up.

I really enjoyed how the author, Rachel Hore, told the story using two storylines. It was a great read and one which looked at unmarried mothers of the time and both the short and long term effects of giving a baby up at birth and also a woman's determination to succeed after upset, in a male dominated world.

Thank you to the publishers, Simon and Schuster, and to Random Things blog tours for inviting me to take part in the blog  tour and for a copy of the book in return for an honest review.