Finding Mr Flood by Ciara Geraghty

Dara Flood always says the most interesting thing about her life happened before she was born. Thirteen days before she came into the world, her father walked up the road and never came back. Now in her twenties, Dara's life has a careful routine. She lives in Dublin with her mother and sister Angel. She has pizza with friends every Wednesday, salsa class every Friday, and sees her boyfriend every Saturday. It's safe and that's the way she likes it. Then Angel gets desperately sick and Dara's ordered life falls apart. Neither she nor her mother is a compatible match for the kidney Angel needs. So Dara sets out to find the father who could be their last hope. But on the path to uncovering the truth about her father, Dara learns that to let life - and love - in, sometimes you just have to let go ...

I am not sure where to start with this review. It was a good book, however it was a long book and I found in places that the story went very slowly, and then in others, especially the end, I found that it was rushed. 

The main characters is Dara Flood, who lives with her mother, Mrs Flood, and her sister, Angel(a) Flood, who has kidney failure and is on the transplant list and always waiting for the phone call from the hospital to say they have an organ. Their father, Mr Flood, returned from work one night, two weeks before Dara was born, and popped down the road to get some cigarettes, but never returned. 

The book is about Angel's need for a new kidney, the phone call arriving and them getting to the hospital to find it wasn't a close enough match, and the subsequent months when Angel becomes withdrawn and 'gives up'. She lets her boyfriend go to enjoy life and not worry about her, and stays in her room, alone. Dara and her mother are distraught and try all they can to encourage Angel to come out of her room and get out and about but they struggle. Dara decides that, because her and her mother are not matches to donate a kidney, that she must find Mr Flood and persuade him to be tested to see if he is a match. 

Dara employs a private investigator, Mr Stanley Flinter, to help her find him. Stanley is, himself, a complicated character. He has a number of brothers, all who have followed their father into the police force, however Stanley was too short and partially deaf in one ear and failed the selection process. His previous girlfriend is now engaged to one of his brothers and already has a daughter with the brother. He has recently been left a dog by a client who died recently, one which is in desperate need of training and calming - Dara works in a dogs home and in return for Stanley's private investigation work, Dara works with the dog. 

The story has many twists and turns in it. It is a long book (over 500 pages) and as I have previously said, it is a good story and one which I enjoyed. I did, however, find some parts of the story were rushed and especially the ending which I thought deserved more time and story time, whereas other parts were very slowly paced. 

The story has many themes, the main ones being the waiting for a transplant and the ways in which it affects not only the person waiting for the transplant but also their family, and also searching for a missing family member. There were also bits of romance - both successful and nonsucessful relationships. There were many times of humour throughout the book - especially when Stanley Flinter was on private investigator business, but also times of sadness due to the main storyline. The story of Mr Flood was also very sad but it was one which he made for himself and ended up very sad and lonely.

I think that this was a book that I would recommend but would warn readers of the storyline first. A family member has kidney problems and only has one kidney working and this is something that could cause kidney failure in future years, and I therefore found it difficult to read some of the story. However, I can also see that it was a well written book which deserves to be read by many.

Thank you to the publishers, Hodder, for sending me the book to review (and the recent book giveaway on my blog).