The Pieces of Ourselves – Maggie Harcourt

Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Flora doesn’t do ‘people’, at least not since the Incident that led to her leaving school midway through the GCSEs. The Incident that led Flora to being diagnosed with bipolar II. The Incident that left her in pieces. She is now working as a housekeeper at Hopwood Home Hotel and just taking things as they come. Until Hal arrvies. He is researching a story about a missing World War I soldier and he wants Flora’s help.

Flora used to love history before the Incident, but spending so much time Hal is her worst nightmare. Yet, as they begin to piece together the life of the missing soldier, a life of lost love, secrets and lies, Flora finds a piece of herself falling for Hal.

Maggie has done it yet again and written another story that I adored and just couldn’t put down. The characters are incredible, the plot, the setting and just the story overall were so wonderful.

Once I had started this book I Just never wanted to put it down. I was instantly drawn into Flora and Hal’s story. Also, I was throughly invested in the mystery behind the World War One soldier that Flora and Hal were investigating. You can tell how much research Maggie Harcourt put into not just the history side of the story but also the mental health side of the story.

Flora is such a wonderful character. I was so drawn into her story and she has a personality that stands out so wonderfully. I have never really read books before where the character has Bipolar II and Maggie has done an excellent job of showing a character with it and especially a young character. Maggie also does an amazing job of showing how Flora comes to being diagnosed and showing how it had affected her life after diagnosis in both a good and bad way. She is constantly worried that telling people about her Bipolar II will make them think of her differently or see her as ‘crazy’. Especially those who used to go to school with her.

Hal has my whole heart. He is just the most amazing and pure human I have ever read in a book. He is so invested in finding out about what happened to the World War One soldier his Grandpa has talked to him about for years. He cares about people and is completely different to the other members in his family. Hal is just plain adorable and he is wonderful!

There are so many side characters in this book that I love too. Charlie and Felix are amazing and Mira deserves a special mention!

The Pieces of Ourselves is a fantastic book that deals with some serious topics but also has light-hearted moments throughout. It has a slow burn romance I loved dearly. The historical element of this book added so much for me and I want to read more books like this in the future. Reading this book felt like being part of an adventure and we learnt things as the characters did.

Overall, this is an amazing new book from Maggie that will have you captured from beginning to end. It is incredibly written and I cannot recommend it enough!

I got the amazing opportunity to interview Maggie all about this book and her writing! Check that out here!