Saturday 4 July 2020

The Paper Bracelet - Rachael English || Blog Tour

Inspired by heartrending real events, the gripping new novel from the No. 1 bestselling author about a former nurse in an Irish mother and baby home who reunites the mothers with the babies they were forced to give up years ago.

Every baby's bracelet held a mother's secret...For almost fifty years, Katie has kept a box of secrets.

It dates from her time working as a nurse in a west of Ireland mother and baby home, and contains a notebook with details of the babies and young women she met there. It also holds many of the babies' identity bracelets.

Following the death of her husband, Katie makes a decision she has long kept at bay. She posts a message on an internet forum, knowing that the information she possesses could help reunite adopted people with their birth mothers.

Soon, the replies are rolling in, and Katie encounters success, failure, heartache and joy as she finds herself in the role of part-detective, part-counsellor - chasing down leads, piecing together stories, and returning many of the bracelets to their original owners.

But there is one bracelet in the box that holds the key to a story that may never be told ...


Wow, wow and wow. This book was one of the most delicate and beautifully written books i have read in a long time that tackles such heart rendering issues in a way that does them justice.

Katie has kept a box of secrets for over fifty years, a box that has been kept away but now alone and facing decisions after the death of her husband she decides now is the time to do something with the box.

The box relates to her time working at a mother and baby home, where babies were given away for adoption, she kept all the babies little birth tags and now she wishes to reunite them with the babies/birth mothers. So aided by her niece she sets about doing do, posting the information on an online forum and then just waits. Eventually people start getting in touch, and Katie and Beth set about helping those as best they can. Yet there is one bracelet that will remain in the box, because the story has never been told.

Told from then and now perspectives we discover Katie in the present as she handles the bracelets, we also meet a girl Patricia, who was in the home and her story about her time there. Alongside that we journey over some of the babies who are handling their own reunions.

The way it was told was lovely and it kept the reader wanting to know more about each section as you read through. It was an emotional journey of a read as we discover all the secrets of the past. I have read several books by Rachael now and each one is a wonderful read but this was something else.

You really must pick this one up, you can do so here
I was gifted my copy for the blog tour.

Rachael English is a bestselling novelist and presenter on Ireland's most popular radio show, Morning Ireland. During more than twenty years as a journalist, she has worked on most of RTÉ Radio's leading current affairs programmes, covering a huge range of national and international stories. jnj




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