Review: Forever Yours

Forever Yours by Debbie Johnson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Eighteen years ago Gemma Jones decided to give her baby up for adoption. A child of a single mother with substance abuse and mental health problems, and currently living with foster parents, Gemma wanted something better for both herself and her baby.

Gemma is now a history teacher at a school in Liverpool. To stop herself from speculating about young children she made a choice to teach sixth formers a long time ago, but of course now that has backfired because her daughter will shortly be turning eighteen and could (theoretically) be one of her students.

Her mother's issues have given Gemma anxiety, something which she self-soothes with counting items and memorising facts. Now as an adult Gemma is alone, self-sufficient, and avoids allowing other people to get close. She even moves jobs every few years and has worked all over the UK.

But this year events conspire to force Gemma out of her shell: a new student who looks uncannily like Gemma; a colleague who makes it clear he fancies her; a woman she meets at yoga; and her elderly neighbour who needs help walking her dog.

How very typical, I no sooner finish a book about a woman who was given up for adoption by her sixteen year old mother than I start a book about a woman who gave up her child for adoption at sixteen.

I have read and really liked a lot of Debbie Johnson's previous books but I have to say that this one was not among my favourites. First, Gemma's habit of counting things and reciting random facts was really irritating (although a shoe-in for a pub quiz), I get that it was a manifestation of her anxiety but my eyes glazed over every time she started.

Second, there seemed to be a little bit of contradiction about Gemma's childhood, at times the reader is told that she was too embarrassed to invite school friends home and consequently never went to their homes either. Also that she couldn't afford things so never went out or did things like other kids. Yet at other points in the story she talks about going to a friend's house and going to the cinema with a friend - and not as if these were the only times she had ever done such things. It was as though Debbie Johnson couldn't keep up the characterisation and/or it didn't fit with the plot at other times.

Third, Gemma seemed to do a lot of navel-gazing self-diagnosis, pages and pages of her dissecting her behaviour and that of her friends and family. Also (this may be point four), if you have no friends and essentially no family, why wouldn't you stay in touch with your foster mother and your social worker who both helped you enormously? It seems like a huge self-sabotage to cut off people and then whine that you are all alone.

Anyway, I liked it but I didn't love it.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.



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