Thank you to Beauty and Lace and The Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read The Night We Met by Zoe Folbigg.
We meet Olivia Messina, 43 years young, a cancer patient, a wife, and a mother. She has had a hideous year, full of consultants, nurses, radiographers, and now, in her words – “we’ve hit rock bottom”.
Her husband Daniel desperately clings to hope of new research and treatments…anything for more time.
Olivia asks Daniel, a sports journalist, to write their story for their girls.
Their story began in Australia in 1996.
Two weeks before Daniel Bleeker and his then-girlfriend were due to fly from London to Sydney for a 3-month backpacking experience, she broke up with him. To make matters worse, she insisted Daniel give his ticket to her new boyfriend. Uncharacteristically, Daniel refused, he told her he would still be going!
While Daniel tried to process the shock dumping, heartache, and how lonely he felt as he toured Sydney, in a coffee shop he notices a girl “with hair like a bonfire, bronze skin and burning eyes”. She was completely at ease in the group she was with.
Coincidences do happen and he continued to see her from a distance as he travelled. The fourth time he saw her, they held each other’s gaze and Daniel realised it was more than a crush for him. He didn’t expect to see her again.
In New Zealand fate brings them together. He finds out her name is Olivia. She shares her unique life story thus far in her 20 years.
With all love stories, they need to happen at the right time. This wasn’t their time and they both get on with their lives. Some years later Daniel travels to Milan for work and tracks Olivia down. This time Olivia really notices Daniel and their story together begins.
Daniel, true to his word writes their story. It tells us about their past and their present. It is full of love, sorrow and loss, and family. It’s a celebration of their daughters Flora and Sofia, the dreams they have both achieved, and the journey of Olivia’s illness.
Their story is often very funny and often very sad. One minute you can be the luckiest family in the world and then in an instant it is all shattered.
An excellent read 4 stars.
A selection of our Beauty and Lace Club Members are reading The Night We Met by Zoe Folbigg. You can read their comments below, or add your own review.
ISBN: 9781789542141
I love to read, any book on any topic. I now love ebooks as they are easier to store, I was running out of bookshelves! My other interests are family, gardening and our beautiful King Charles spaniel dog who is my reading companion.
Thank you to Beauty and Lace and Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read and review The Night We Met.
This is the story of Daniel and Olivia, of meetings, missed opportunities, intense love, stillbirth, rainbow babies, teenage angst and a journey through brain cancer.
Written across two colliding time frames, this is the tale of two very different people, who find their lives intersecting and drawing them ever closer until they merge. It’s a tale of love and loss, of strange beginnings and sad endings, of the realities of life, of the impact of terrorism, and football world cups and the inevitable drama between mothers and daughters.
At times I found this book hard to read, and found I could only read a few chapters at a time before the intensity of everything going on got too much and I had to take a break. It is both well written and overwhelming.
Not an easy book to read, but a book true to all the variants of life never can be. Perhaps the biggest criticism is that Folbigg tried to put too much into the book making it too intense.
I could see this tale being made into a great tear jerker film.
This is the beautiful story of how Daniel and Olivia’s fated relationship began with chance encounters around the world. It has sad moments and happy moments that capture relationships so well.
Thanks to Beauty and Lace and Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read this book.
‘The Night We Met’ By Zoe Folbigg is a great read. It is about the love story of Olivia and Daniel.
The book time hops between ‘now’ where Olivia is going through treatment for brain cancer and ‘then’ telling the story of how Olivia and Daniel met when they were younger backpacking around Australia and how they reconnected after their separate trips.
The characters are all very likeable and
I really enjoyed the book although I felt this also could’ve been written chronologically and maybe had a greater impact with Olivia’s cancer diagnosis.
Thank you to Beauty and Lace and The Head of Zeus for the opportunity to read ‘The Night We Met’ by Zoe Folbigg.
The Night We Met by Zoe Folbigg is a fantastic love story. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry and it makes you feel as if you’re there. The characters are well written and the emotions are genuinely portrayed.
This is a heart warming, sweet, happy, sad, emotional book. It has a bit of everything, but it’s beautiful. With the recent passing on a family member, too soon, this book definitely touched on topics I’ve been reflecting on a fair bit. And then it moved into the romance story and I do love romance stories. Lovely characters, lovely story.
Thanks to Beauty and Lace for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book. This was my first e-book and I was really surprised how easy it was to follow. The characters were really easy to understand and usually I don’t do well with the stories going back and forth between present and the past but it was surprisingly so easy to follow and read.
The story was really sad at times but funny bits made up for the sad parts.
Overall, its a good read and I would definitely recommend.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this book. This was my first e-book and I was really surprised how easy it was to follow. The characters were really easy to understand and usually I don’t do well with the stories going back and forth between present and the past but it was surprisingly so easy to follow and read.
The story was really sad at times but funny bits made up for the sad parts.
Overall, its a good read and I would definitely recommend.
Thank you Beaty and Lace for the opportunity to read The Night We Met.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was quite sad, but beautifully written.
This was an easy and beautiful read, with two threads, the love story between Daniel and Olivia and the present where Olivia is dying of cancer. Olivia begs Daniel to write their love story for their daughters and this story is alternated between the months leading up to the present day. Their love story starts in 1996, a chance meeting in Australia while they are travelling and ends in 2018 in a hospital bed. I loved the story between Daniel and Olivia, told from both points of view at various times throughout their lives, weaving to make a whole. I knew it was going to end with me in tears, which it did, but the journey there was worth it.
Thanks to Beauty and Lace Book Club and Head of Zeus for a digital copy in return for an honest review.
A well written book that I fell into reading easily.
I like a book that stats my emotions as I feel it really brings me in to the characters world of emotions and the story that is being told.
wonderful book which will stick in my mind for a while.
Thankyou for this ebook, I find it easier to read.