Book Review: Now That I’ve Found You by Ciara Geraghty

Now That I've Found You

Now That I’ve Found You by Ciara Geraghty
Release Date: 15th January 2015
Publisher: Hachette Books Ireland
Buy: Kindle | Paperback
Rating:

Forty-two-year-old Vinnie knows lots of things.
He knows new books and school shoes are expensive. He knows his teenage daughter keeps getting into trouble and he knows his seven-year-old has wet the bed every night for over a year.
What Vinnie doesn’t know is whether his wife is coming back, or if he will ever get better at single fatherhood.
Ellen knows that what happened in the accident was all her fault. She knows she’s too scared to get behind the wheel of a car ever again and she knows that some scars are harder to hide than others.
What Ellen doesn’t know is how to move on. And she doesn’t know anything about Vinnie, the taxi driver who drives her to physiotherapy every week.
And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other’s life forever.

In Now That I’ve Found You we meet seemingly ‘ordinary’ characters Vinnie and Ellen. However, it quickly becomes clear that there’s nothing ordinary about these two people. Taxi driver Vinnie is a struggling single dad to two children after his wife walked out on her family, and former Doctor, Ellen is coming to terms with her new solitary life after being in a car accident and losing her unborn baby. It just so happens that Ellen turns out to be one of Vinnie’s fares, and circumstances end up bringing the pair together…

This is a magical, heart wrenching story about life’s struggles, love and the importance of family, with the added bonus of being mainly told from the male perspective, something which isn’t all that common in this genre.
Ciara Geraghty is an author who I have never had the pleasure of reading before, but I fully intend to work my way through her entire collection of novels after discovering Now That I’ve Found You. It was warm, funny, sad and hugely real.
I loved the style in which this novel was presented, particularly as Vinnie’s parts are written exactly how Vinnie speaks. Short sentences, Irish pronunciations, the lot…however I really liked this as I could practically hear Vinnie telling me the story in my head; it really brought him and all of the other characters to life for me.
Ellen’s contributions to the story are through letters which she has been advised to write to her former husband after losing her baby in a tragic car accident, which has left her scarred and on crutches. I really enjoyed reading from both parties perspectives about the relationship and I was immediately engrossed in Ellen and Vinnie’s story right from when they first met.
This is not one of those ‘love at first sight’ stories and that’s one of the things I enjoyed about Now That I’ve Found You. Vinnie and Ellen’s relationship progresses slowly, alongside all of the separate happenings of their lives, giving you time to get to know them as they get to know one another.

I adored both Vinnie and Ellen. You couldn’t find more likeable, vulnerable characters and I desperately wanted a happy ever after for both of them after all that they’d been through. These two are in no way perfect and Ciara never shies away from that, essentially proving that they are only human, just like the rest of us and therefore making the whole story a lot more ‘real’. The characters personalities, including Vinnie’s children Kerry and Finn are captured perfectly. I also loved Vinnie’s friend, Kenny (mainly for his fashion sense…)

Whilst there are humorous, light hearted moments to this story there’s also a much darker side too, particularly with Vinnie’s first wife, Paula and the difficulties that she faced with suffering from Bipolar Disorder. It’s one of those stories that will have you laughing one minute and then bawling your eyes out the next.
Now That I’ve Found You is a delight of a story. There’s so much more to this than your average romance and I found this to be a spectacularly written, touching, extremely addictive story that I struggled to put down.

Whilst I was sad to finish this story I am now really looking forward to reading more from Ciara Geraghty…

A huge thank you to publishers Hatchette and to www.lovereading.co.uk for giving me the opportunity to review Now That I’ve Found You. ♥

Image of Ciara Geraghty

Ciara Geraghty is the author of four novels: Saving Grace, Becoming Scarlett, Finding Mr Flood and Lifesaving for Beginners. She lives in Dublin with her husband, three children and dog.