Blog Tour – Will You Stay Another Day? by Samantha Tonge @SamTongeWriter @rararesources @BoldwoodBooks #BookReview #BlogTour #boldwoodbloggers #PublicationDay #RespectRomFic #WillYouStayAnotherDay

Confession time, I love everything about this author’s writing and was desperate to start this book. You’d be forgiven for assuming that I may be biased with my review, but you’d be mistaken, as I find that I am more critical of my favourite authors. If you’d like to read some of my earlier reviews for Sam’s books, please follow these links: The Promise of Tomorrow and If You Could See Me Now

My thanks to Rachel Gilbey of Rachel’s Random Resources for the tour invitation and support, and for arranging for me to receive a digital advance reading copy via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. You can read my thoughts below.

Synopsis

If you could spend just one more day with someone, who would it be?

When Lili sends a jokey ‘knock-knock’ message to her best friend Em, she doesn’t expect to hear back. Because – as Lili notices the chill in the air, and the little robin in her garden – she realises Christmas must be just around the corner once again. A whole year since she last saw Em.

But then this time someone replies. ‘Who’s there?’ It can’t possibly be Em, but Lili wants to believe it could be, and she hastily suggests meeting.

However when she gets to the meeting place, there only one other person there waiting. A man. And not just any man. The most handsome man Lili’s ever seen, Dylan… And he is also waiting for someone he’s been missing.

As the days get shorter and Autumn turns to Winter, will two lonely hearts spend another Christmas without their loved ones? Or can they welcome an unexpected friendship? Or maybe even more, if they can just help each other to focus on not what they’ve lost, but what they’ve found…

Purchase Link

Review

As you can perhaps gather from the book title, this is an emotional read that deals with loss and grief, but not in a way that weighs on your emotions, but replaces that loss with the more powerful feeling of hope.

Initially, we meet Lilli and learn about her loss. Her best friend, Emma, had died a year ago, and Lilli still hadn’t accepted her death. Having discovered that mobile phone companies didn’t reallocate numbers until sometime after the owner had passed away, she had continued to message Emma whenever she felt the urge to contact her. However, when she receives a reply, she begins to believe that she will see Emma again as they arrange to meet in a pub. What she didn’t expect was to meet the gorgeous Dylan or to discover that he had been responding to her messages, assuming they were from someone else.

The way this story is crafted drew me in, and I found myself hoping for a happy ending, despite the clues to the contrary. Lilli was an absolute joy, and her positivity was a source of delight. Having started her life over, several hundred miles from her home in Manchester, she was heavily involved in recycling and upcycling items donated to the charity where she worked. I particularly enjoyed her commitment to her donation ceremonies, where a funeral was held as a final farewell to a cherished item. From the awkward to the heartwarming, some of the eulogies gave me pause and caused me to reconsider my bond with inanimate objects.

Dylan took me a little longer to connect with, as the story is created in a way that doesn’t reveal everything immediately. Still, once I was able to see him clearly, I was invested in the potential of their shared future, if only they could find their way to the same page.

This gorgeous book starts with flashes of hope and then becomes completely hope-filled as the characters begin to share their stories, and my tears gently rolled down my cheeks. Whilst this may not be Sam’s most emotional offering, it still captured my imagination and left me quietly hopeful with a belief that there is a way to recover from grief. I hope you enjoy this book and also the robin…

Author Bio

Samantha Tonge is the bestselling and award-winning author of over fifteen romantic fiction titles. Her books for Boldwood mark a broadening of her writing into multi-generational woman’s fiction. She lives in Manchester with her family.