Minty by Christina Banach #BookReview

About this book…

Fourteen-year-old twins Minty and Jess are inseparable. Maybe they bicker now and then, even crave a bit of space once in a while. But they have a connection. Unbreakable. Steadfast. Nothing can tear them apart. Until a family trip to the coast puts their bond in jeopardy. As Minty tries to rescue her dog from drowning she ends up fighting for her life. Will Minty survive? If she doesn’t, how will Jess cope without her? Only the stormy sea has the answer. Minty is a story of love, loss and coming to terms with consequences. It’s a spiritual tale that will linger in your mind long after you’ve read the final word.

My review…

As everyone knows I just love books about twins, it doesn’t seem to matter which genre either as the twin relationship just fascinates me both in real life and in fictional settings as well. This is the first young adult book I’ve read with twins but it’s probably a book that can be read by adults as well as stories about grief knows no age boundaries. Here in her debut novel Christina Banach gives us a story of love, loss and forgiveness affecting a family with twin 14 year old girls. And they have dogs!!!!

I think the scene at the beginning of the book was one that would bring terror to any parent or dog walker…a dog in trouble in the water. Now when you haven’t been in this situation, it’s very easy to judge! How many lives are lost each year when people attempt to rescue their dogs from a situation but get into difficulty? And the awful thing is that normally that person dies but their dog has somehow survived against the odds. So I found this a very realistic and scary start to how Minty dies and becomes lost and separated from her twin Jess. There was an essence of The Lovely Bones from this point onwards as Minty is stuck in an afterlife where she watches her family struggling to cope without her.

The relationship between Minty and Jess and also the one she strikes up with Jack, her afterlife friend who helps her to understand what’s happened to her, are really well developed which leads to a true depth of feeling to their interactions. It doesn’t matter that you know where the story has got to be heading as it’s Jess and Mintys journey to their acceptance of the inevitable that is at the core of this lovely book.

This is the sort of book my girls would have loved when they were teenagers and that I would have encouraged them to read. It’s a poignant and emotional read that ultimately has an uplifting message of hope in its plot. I can tell that the author has put a lot of herself and her beliefs into her work and it works all the better for that.

I received a review copy of this book from the author and have chosen to write a review after reading it.

Minty is out now and available to buy here from Amazon UK

About the author…

Christina Banach is a former head teacher who lives in Scotland with her husband and their two rescue dogs. She loves walking; delicious food and wine; evenings at the theatre; exploring new places; surfing the Net; listening to music; and anything that makes her laugh. Plus she has a penchant for shoes and handbags. A voracious reader, she particularly enjoys children’s fiction (all those years buying for school libraries!) – which led her to writing. Christina is hard at work on her next novel.