Title: With Love From The Inside

Author: Angela Pisel

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Pub. Date: 9 August, 2016

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I am giving this one four stars because of two things: 1) It made me cry. 2) When I was two-thirds of the way through the book, I had to put it down to drive somewhere and instead of just waiting to come back to it, I searched the library audiobook collection so I wouldn’t have to stop reading. Thank goodness they had it! Even though I held my breath for the last 30 minutes of the story, and literally stopped doing anything else until it finished, I did not give it five stars only for the reasons below.

First off, this is a story of Grace, a mother on death row convicted of killing her infant son. It is also the story of her daughter Sophie who had to grow up without her, building a beautiful life out of lies, convinced that she is the offspring of a killer until she accidently discovers new evidence that could change everything. As the execution date looms, so do the conflicts in both their lives.

As much as I liked this story, the writing actually was disappointing in that the parts written from Sophie’s perspective sometimes read too close to superficial women’s fiction for my taste. Too pretty, too perfect, Beautiful Life-Beautiful Wife Syndrome…such as, pretty Sophie and her rich pretty doctor husband yearning to adopt the too cute Max from the too terrible ratty young poor mother. Grace was just written with a deeper touch, less judgment, and more complexity. If the whole thing would have been at that level, I would not be hesitant to call it literary.

Despite all that it was a book that I enjoyed and will be happy to share with my friends just to see what they think.

A copy was received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.