After The End

I've read I Let You Go, I See You, and Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh. Last year she brought out After The End, a different genre to the three I'd already read so I didn't go out of my way to read it, but when I saw it on a Kindle deal I thought I'd give it a go.

"Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. Only now they're facing the most important decision of their lives - and they don't agree.

With the consequences of an impossible choice threatening to devastate them both, nothing will ever be the same again."

The story is split into two halves, the first half covering the devastating situation that Max and Pip find themselves in. Their two year old child is in Paediatric Intensive Care suffering from brain damage resulting from surgery to remove a brain tumor. They have the unenviable decision of deciding whether to transfer him to a hospital in America for treatment, which may or may not prolong his life, or follow the hospital's advice to provide him with palliative care which will ultimately lead to his death. Max and Pip don't agree.

The second part of the story is 'After The End' and follows two separate stories of what happens to Max and Pip after their son dies.

It's very clever how the second part of the book follows two pathways depending on which decision is taken, though I must say that I found it quite confusing following what was happening as it flits in time and storyline from chapter to chapter and the ending had me totally baffled. I like Clare Mackintosh's twists in her books but I don't think this book, with the subject matter as it is, calls for it.

I'd say it's an okay book but it is a story of two halves and I much preferred the first half where I knew where I was and I didn't have to concentrate quite so much.