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Title: The Greatest Gift

Author: Rachael Johns

Narrator: Ulli Birve

Format: Unabridged

Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins

Language: English

Release date: 12-08-17

Publisher: Harper Audio

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Best-selling author Rachael Johns returns with a poignant, heartwarming story of a woman who wants nothing else than to be a mum, and one who never wanted to be a mother.

Mother: female parent of a child

Mum: the woman who nurtures, raises and loves a child

Radio host Harper Drummond lives for her career. Every day she meets fascinating people doing extraordinary things, but has begun to wonder whether there could be something more for her out there. She's financially secure, happily married to Samuel and has a great group of friends - what more could she want? It's only when she interviews one special couple that she starts to think about whether she could make a different kind of contribution.

Claire and Jasper Lombard are passionate about their thriving hot air balloon business and know they're lucky to find such joy in their work and in each other. But while Jasper has accepted that he will never be a father, Claire has found it hard to come to terms with her infertility. She doesn't want Jasper to regret choosing her over a child in the years to come. Is there a way to give themselves a real chance at being a happy family? Can they find someone who will give them the greatest gift? Or will it come at a greater cost?

The poignant, heartwarming story of two women: one who wants nothing else than to be a mum, and one who never wanted to be a mother, from the best-selling, ABIA award-winning author of The Patterson Girls.

Members Reviews:

A love story of a different sort

The opening chapters of The Greatest Gift had me wondering a bit where the story was going. Jumping back and forth between two time periods, and focusing on a different set of characters in each, it took a while before it became clear how those two disparate stories would intersect.

Once the mist started to part at around chapter five, I realized I was hooked.

To my mind, The Greatest Gift by Rachael Johns is very much that. Two completely separate stories with three or perhaps four central characters, that just happen to intersect in a way that irrevocably changes the course of each of those central character's lives in ways they never could have imagined.

Focusing heavily on the way childhood experiences can mold and shape our approaches and attitudes to things, this book is very much centered around the questions of motherhood that I suspect are endemic to almost all women. Do I want to become a mother? Would I be any good at it? Am I even capable of bearing a child?

Different approaches and answers to each of these questions are touched upon by the wide variety of friends and family that interact with the primary characters as the story unfolds, and just when you think things are starting to make sense, the major plot twist in the story forces each of these questions back under the microscope to be re-examined under a new paradigm.

It was at that point that this story really took hold of my heart. What had been interesting and compelling reading, suddenly became a riveting, can't-even-imagine-putting-it-down experience as the various characters struggled to find new answers in the brave new world left in the wake of the upheaval that rocked their collective worlds.

I've always thought that the best books get you thinking.