Let’s start by saying ‘I absolutely loved this book’.

It is set in both Trinidad and Tobago and also London. But the main narrative happens in the Caribbean. I wanted to look up all the places as I read about them, but the story was so compelling that .i didn’t want to stop and search.

Dawn is the only daughter of a Trinidadian white family who have made their money in business selling fruit juices. At 16 Dawn makes her great ‘mistake’. She gets pregnant from a one night stand with a tourist and her family arrange for her to have the baby adopted. The rest of the story describes the effect this has on her life.

I felt all the characters were fully rounded and believable. Dawn herself, who narrates the story, is like someone you might know. She is self aware, she does her best to make her life a success, and on the outside at least she succeeds.. But marriage, career, children, apart, she still has a deep secret and a sad void in her life. So she does her best to find out what happened to her first baby.

I loved the writing, I felt very involved in Dawn’s story, and could hardly wait to read some more as I wanted her so much to heal. The descriptions of life in Trinidad are fascinating. There are tensions in the history of this island, and there are changes that. affect her family. The matter of fact way that they accept new dangers such as having to be careful while walking a few yards on the beach, and to have locked gates as well as houses, really brings home the reality of how easy it is to lose an easy and comfortable life style.

The book brings these social and cultural changes into the story but keeps well to its central theme ; the ties and bonds of motherhood.

Look forward to reading more by this author.

A rather sad story of a mother who has built a life with two beautiful sons, but longs for the baby daughter she gave away when she was a girl. There is a dramatic description of how her family in Trinidad had her smuggled to Venezuela to secretly give birth and leave her baby with the nuns there. Having trained as a doctor in the UK and her marriage to a fellow medic fails she keeps trying to find her daughter. There are lovely descriptions of her family's life in Trinidad and Tobago where she often comes to visit.

A teacher once told me: good storytelling is building a wall with bricks, without anyone noticing the construction and/or the individual bricks. That's this story. It never feels constructed.

A beautiful book, told from the perspective of Dawn Bishop, born and raised in Trinidad where her family has worked hard and has become a household name. A teenage pregnancy after an encounter not even worthy of the name one night stand, is not in the family’s books and so Dawn travels the perilous sea to Venezuela to grow big and give birth there.
Life goes on as was, afterwards. So it seems, but not for Dawn.
We meet teenage Dawn through the eyes of 58 y/o Dawn, living in the UK, now divorced, two sons. It’s her voice, her memories that take us through her past and current. At 16 Dawn didn’t focus on any details that might, at 40, or at 58, help her find her daughter.

I loved the voice, the change of times, the growing up, how all characters evolved throughout time.

I received an eARC from NetGalley in return for my honest opinion

I absolutely loved this book. I wasn't sure what to expect and requested on the basis of the rubrik. Very glad I did. A wonderful read. I was really invested in Dawn and her story. I felt I was with her all the way. The author's writing style just flowed and made it easy to read. Dawn is a great character and I felt that we really got to know her. A whole mixture of emotions as I read this book. Wonderful

Reviewed on Bluesky, TV Book Club on FB, Amazon when able

This is one of the most powerful literary portrayals about motherhood I have ever read, and I wish to start off this review by thanking the publishers and NetGalley for my complimentary ARC that allowed me to read this novel, culminating in the unbiased book review that now follows.

From the start, it is clear this is going to be a unique novel, as its plot oscillates between Trinidad and Tobago on the one hand and London, England on the other hand. The heroine is Dawn, born into a white Trinidadian family of industrialists. In 1980, and at the age of sixteen, she unexpectedly falls pregnant, and her family send her to Venezuela where she gives birth to the little girl that is subsequently placed or adoption. This momentously traumatic experience continues to influence Dawn as she moves to England, builds a career, gets married and then divorced, and gives birth to two subsequent children. It is easy to empathise with this woman, who despite her privileged start in a wonderful Caribbean setting, has been through so much, and who continues to suffer from the forced separation of a baby many decades earlier. Along with Dawn, the reader is left wondering what happened to Dawn’s daughter – and suspense heightens when, in the early 2020s, a woman gets in touch with Dawn through an internet forum, claiming she might be the daughter that Dawn has been searching for all of these years. It is all credit to the author that she sensitively manages to combine so many different threads and themes – those of societal injustices, cultural change, gendered notions, the complications of motherhood, and personal dilemmas – into the nuanced novel that we now have in front of us. Highly recommended, I hope this novel that, as the title hints, shows love in all its myriad forms, attracts as large a readership as possible.

Taking the reader on a mothers search for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago.. A gobble-it-all-up-in-one-sitting kind of book

this book depicts the lingering sadness of a mother who never got to be her babies mother. that sadness i felt in my own heart. i cannot imagine the very real situation some woman find themselves in. the courage it must take to even blink the next day after having your child either taken or forced to give them up.
this is the story of Dawn Bishop. when she was 16 she is scurried away in shame over being pregnant. she is to wait until the birth, with the nuns, and then hand over her child. she then has to return. she then has to carry on with life. but she never does. well,not completely anyway.
but she is now older, she is now 58, she is now needing answers. she needs to know how to fill the whole her lost daughter took out of her.
she knows shes not had the worst life. she has a home, shes been married now divorce and she does have two sons although they are now grown up.
but she knows she must search for what happened to her child.
we are then taken on a journey of her search. not only learning of what she is having to go through now but also of her life and just how that one event has rippled through everything.
i thoroughly enjoyed this book. i was swept up in the feeling of a main character and wanted to both cheer her on and cheer her soul up.

Beautifully written novel which moves along at a good pace. When you pick up a book you want to be transported into that world and Love Forms achieves just this. Motherhood, family, relationships, youth and the passing of time were the themes that came to the surface, but I felt especially the idea of taking control of your life. As the key character is a girl, then a woman, that life-ownership for her thoughts, decisions and actions is something that time has definitely affected. She's grown and we learn along with her. The power and confusion of retrospection! I enjoyed reading it and would look out for another by the same author.