‘I want to tell you a story, my beautiful child, of every magical thing I wish for you. This is where it all begins…’
It all begins when Edie’s daughter Lexie was born. A day when hope gleams like sunlight on mirror-flat water. Lexie’s arrival makes Edie feel like her life is complete, and her love for her newborn daughter is immediate, like a force of nature.
Even though Edie’s marriage to Ryan isn’t perfect, Edie knows she can hold their family together, for Lexie and her brother.
However, life – in all its beautiful, messy glory – doesn’t always follow the script. And by the time Lexie is a teenager, everything’s changed, and she’s moving as far away from her family as she possibly can.
But now Edie needs her back home, where it all began. Because – as everything in Edie’s life changes – she realises her daughter Lexie might be the only person who can save her…
About The Author
My Review
This book is about a mother writing to her estranged daughter in the hope that revisiting the past might heal the distance between them. In Where It All Began, Debbie Howells explores memory, grief, and the fragile bonds that shape a family. As Edie writes to Lexie, she retraces her daughter’s childhood—both the joyful moments that once held them together and the person whose presence ultimately drove them apart. She believes that understanding what went wrong may be the key to bringing Lexie home again, but the deeper she digs into the past, the more unsettling the truth becomes.
Told largely through Edie’s memories, the novel unfolds as an emotional and introspective journey. Howells captures the aching complexity of love, loss, and regret with sensitivity, creating a story that feels intimate and deeply reflective. The pacing is gentle and occasionally repetitive, but this slow approach allows the emotional weight of the narrative to settle. The novel’s powerful exploration of family, grief, and forgiveness lingers long after the final page.
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