"Somewhere inside of happy" by Anna McPartlin

An audio book, swiching between PoVs and timelines.

It's 2015. Ireland. Maisie is at a launch of her book. She has a daughter Valerie. Her son died violently on Jan 1st, 1995, when he was 16. We go back to 1992. Maisie's mother Bridie is showing the first signs of dementia. Jeremy happily cares for her. Fred (a policeman who helped her years before and has been helpful since) asks her out. We go back further. Maisie got pregnant. The father was forced to marry her. He battered her enough for her to require brain surgery.

1995 - Jemery's best friend is Rave, whose mother has disappeared - mad or a Moony. Jemery's next best friend is Derdrie, but she wants sex which is a problem. She says that "he's not like the other boys". Someone hints that Rave and Jemery are gay. The 2 boys go off together (to a cabin Rave has prepared in the mountains to escape from his father). Meanwhile Fred (who Bridie dislikes) and Maisie have sex on their 2nd date. Jeremy doesn't come back that night.

Next day the police start investigating. Maisie feels guilty that because of sex she didn't realise for 30 hours that Jeremy had gone. Valery feels guilty because she lied to her mother to cover for Jeremy, just in case. They go round to Rave's father Sid. He's a junkie. Maisie feels guilty that she didn't know earlier - she could have helped him. Her friend Lynn (even she has PoV sections) offers to looks after Bridie.

The press find out that there was gay porn in Jeremy's bedroom. Things begin to make sense for Dierdre. Maisie's husband Dan turns up. Fred tells Maisie that he broke Dan's leg with a club and threatened him with death if he returned - there's a suspicion about this earlier in the book. Rave has recently used a credit card - caught on CCTV.

We learn (rather late I think) that for years Rave has known he's gay. In the cabin Jeremy comes out to him and Rave instinctively pushes him away. He dies because of a protruding nail in the wall. Rave writes an apology to Massie and tries to kill himself. He's saved.

We end up back at the book launch. Rave is there. So is Arthur, the result of Fred and Massie's first night together. Bridie died a year after Jeremy did, never understanding his disappearance. In her speech, Maisie urges tolerance.

Other reviews

• sarahwritesaboutstuff ( although I loved Bridie (Maisie’s mother who is becoming senile), I didn’t really feel as if her parts added anything to the story. Same can be said for a few of the pieces from Jeremy’s group of friends.)
• Justine McGrath (the characters are so authentically portrayed that by the end of the book you feel you know them as if they were real)
• Sandra Danby (If I have one criticism, it is the Prologue set twenty years after the main story. It tells us so many things I would expect to discover through reading the book. My favourite character? Bridie. She is drawn with such affection, a ‘game old bird’ dancing with her sixteen-year-old grandson.)