The Bookish Outsider: Let Her Go

Friday, 25 August 2017

Let Her Go - Dawn Barker

Could you share your child with someone else?

Zoe wanted a baby more than anything. But her dreams will come at a price…

After years of struggling to conceive, Zoe and her husband face the prospect of never having a family. When Zoe’s stepsister, Nadia, offers to be a surrogate it presents the perfect solution. A healthy girl, Louise, is born.

But no one imagined just how hard it would be to know someone else was also mother to your child. As the pressure on Zoe and Nadia mounts, they make choices that there is no going back from.
Years later, Louise is in desperate need of her family’s help. Can they put their painful history aside to save the child they love so much?

This was a tough read for me, knowing it was about infertility and surrogacy but I wanted to know just how Nadia and Zoe cope with this momentous decision they've both made and how both sides of the story were portrayed.

Zoe has Lupus, a disease that means that a lot of sufferers cannot have children. Step forward Nadia, Zoe's step-sister who already has 3 children of her own but is willing to be a surrogate for Zoe so she can have the child she so desperately wants. At first, things to go to plan but Nadia soon realizes that giving up Louise is not what she wants and starts trying to find ways to get her back. Zoe is fully aware of how Nadia feels but she's dealing with a disintegrating marriage and her husband Lachlan won't talk to her. When things come to a head Nadia decides that the baby is no longer safe with Zoe and Lachlan and takes them to court to try and get custody.

The story of Zoe, Lachlan, Louise, and Nadia jumps back and forth between two different time periods, with Lou as a baby and then as a struggling teenager. While I was drawn to Louise and felt such sorrow at what she was going through I found it hard to like either Zoe or Nadia. They were quite unlikeable characters a lot of the time, unable to have an adult conversation about the situation and instead choosing to run away from what had to be the most difficult thing in their lives.

Let Her Go is just that, the story of letting someone go. Whether it's the right thing to do or not and what the effect of that decision can have on a family for the rest of their lives. It's powerfully written, at times heartbreaking and an incredibly emotional story but what I liked best was the depiction of Zoe's illness. It wasn't just mentioned once, at the start of the story as a plot device and forgotten about. It was mentioned consistently throughout the story and how it affected Zoe and her way of thinking, the desperation she felt of becoming seriously ill again and the possibility of Louise being taken away from her.

If you enjoy stories about family, how major choices can affect family members and people trying to find their way back to each other then do read Let Her Go.