The Truth About Melody Browne: From the number one bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

Product Information

As she makes surprising discoveries, Melody confides in her friend Stacey, who urges her BFF to move ahead with her life, maybe even allow a man in. Melody's son Ed - a well-adjusted teenager - is also a wonderful support. Melody barely makes ends meet, working her son’s school cafeteria but everything suddenly changes when she accepts to go on a date with Ben. They attend to a hypnotist’s show and she finds herself at the stage. She passes out and as soon as she wakes up she starts to remember some pieces of her missing past which drags her to the out of the country to face with her estranged parents to fill the blanks about her own life. Melody Brown is thirty-three years old. When was nine years old a fire destroyed her home. She and her parents were saved, but she has no memory of her early childhood from before the fire. She grew to be a rebellious teenager. When she found herself pregnant and abandoned by the father of her baby, her parents were angry, disappointed, and hurt – and, at the age of 15, Melody found herself on her own, giving birth to a baby boy, Edward. She raised her son alone in a Council housing flat near Covent Garden and remained estranged from her parents, working as a dinner lady at Edward’s school and devoting herself entirely to raising her son. She met her best friend at a home for unwed expectant mothers and they remained close friends since that time. Her friend’s life evolved in one direction, meeting and marrying a man who raised her daughter as his own. She had two more children and a happy family life. Melody’s life went in a different direction as she remained aloof to others, and devoted herself entirely to providing a loving warm home environment for her son. When Melody Browne was 9 years old, her family's home burned down and it left her with no memories prior to the tragedy. She is now in her early 30s and a single mother living in London. While attending a hypnotist show, Melody faints onstage. And that jumpstarts her desire to learn more about her past. The story alternates between the present day and key moments in Melody's life when she was a child.

As a mother this story had me in tears at some points, for example when she overhears her dad and stepmother talking about her future and her dad breaks down while she is sleeping on the nursery floor - any parent would be shouting at the book and struggle to comprehend what they were saying.Melody is randomly selected to participate on stage, and is mesmerized into behaving like a gassy five-year-old child. After giving the audience a good laugh, Melody faints, and wakes up with random recollections of her early years. Moving and dark' The Times'Full of heart and humour, this will move you to tears. An absolute must-read' Cosmopolitan____________

Melody Browne suffers from traumatic experience: when she was nine, her family house was burned to the ground. No family belongings or any specific memory left behind. I would've read it in time, yet fate must've wanted it read sooner. Fate is sometimes smarter than me. She won here... wow, this was a great book. I had some struggles connecting in the beginning, as the tale starts as erratically as Melody Browne's memory. There are a lot of characters and some strange moments where she stops investigating... and I was like... 'No, honey... Google that now, you'll have your answer.' But I decided to just let it go and enjoy the story as it unfolded. When I did that around 15 to 20% into the book, it became so much stronger. They were smiling at her, her mother and father, smiling with sooty faces and frazzled hair. Her mother put her hand to her hair and stroked it. “Oh thank God!” she cried breathlessly. “Thank God!” The rest of the book covers a two-week period where Melody begins to delve into a myriad of memory snapshots which fill in the blanks of a life that she lived before the age of nine, and it wasn’t a very happy one. It’s truly impressive family drama with bunch of deeply layered, impeccably developed and memorable characters. I always enjoy the powerful writing style of the author so it was another hit for me to highly recommend.

Table of Contents

Lisa Jewell (born 19 July 1968) is a British author of popular fiction. Her books include Ralph's Party, Thirtynothing, After The Party (a sequel to Ralph's Party), [1] and later Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs, Invisible Girl and The Night She Disappeared. [2] Her latest book None of This is True was published in July 2023. [3] Life [ edit ] After being made redundant, Jewell accepted a challenge from her friend, Yasmin Boland, to write three chapters of a novel in exchange for dinner at her favourite restaurant. Those three chapters were eventually developed into Jewell's debut novel Ralph's Party, which then became the UK's bestselling debut novel in 1999. [5] [6] Somebody took her elbow and moved her gently toward the bright light of an ambulance. She was wrapped in a blanket and fed oxygen through a strange-smelling plastic mask. Her eyes were riveted by the mayhem around her. Slowly reality seeped through the layers of smoke and chaos and something hit her like a thunderbolt.

This “touching, insightful, and gripping story” (Sophie Kinsella, #1 New York Times bestselling author) from the instant New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone follows a young woman searching for answers about her unknown past and the mysterious fire that irrevocably changed her life. When she was nine years old, Melody Browne's house burned down, taking every toy, every photograph, every item of clothing and old Christmas card with it. But not only did the fire destroy all her possessions, it took with it all her memories—Melody Browne can remember nothing before her ninth birthday. A master at unspooling tightly told tales, Jewell specializes in perfectly-pitched thrillers without sacrificing a drop of her characters’ complexities, secrets, and desires, and this latest one is no exception." The Seattle Review of Books Though this was not a favorite from Ms. Jewell, I am glad I had the opportunity to read one of her older publications.I realized this is one of her old time works: its genre is a little different from her regular suspense books, this is mostly women’s fiction and mystery but it’s filled with true emotions wrench your hearts and it directly speaks with your soul. Now in her early thirties, Melody lives in a council flat in the middle of London with her seventeen-year-old son. She hasn't seen her parents since she left home at fifteen, but Melody doesn't mind, she's better off on her own. She's made a good life for herself and her son and she likes it that way. Until one night something extraordinary happens. Whilst attending a hypnotist show with her first date in years she faints—and when she comes round she starts to remember. The general premise of the story is that Melody doesn't remember anything about her childhood prior to a house fire when she was seven years old. After getting pregnant at 15, she has been estranged from her parents, raising her now-almost-18-year-old son alone. She goes on a date with a nice guy and they attend a hypnotist show, while there Melody faints and then starts to remember bits and pieces of her past, which aren't exactly part of the childhood she remembers. As the weeks go by, she begins to put things together and learns a lot about herself and her family. But with every mystery she solves another one materialises, with every question she answers another appears. And Melody begins to wonder if she'll ever know the truth about her past . . .