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The Best of Everything

On sale

10th April 2025

Price: £20

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Selected: Hardcover / ISBN-13: 9781035404797

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‘It’s not every hurt you can see with your eyes’

Paulette’s the kind of woman who likes the future all mapped out: the wedding to Denton, the Caribbean honeymoon, the gingham quilt on the baby’s crib. Until one morning Garfield, Denton’s friend, arrives at her door with the news that Denton won’t be coming around any more, that there won’t be time for her to say goodbye.

Somehow Garfield finds his way into her bed, and sooner than anyone can believe there is a baby, and suddenly giving Bird, her son, the best of everything is what gives Paulette’s life meaning.

So why is it another little boy, Nellie, who keeps Paulette awake at night? Nellie who is being raised a few streets away, with no sign of a mum. Surely Paulette is the last person who should be getting tangled up in any of that?

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING is a novel about the meaning of kindness, and the love that can steal into our lives – in spite of the best laid plans.

Reviews

This is a book of such tenderness, full of pain, grief and despair and yet playful and joyful at the same time. Kit de Waal has an uncanny ability to create vivid characters with such empathy that I want to reach into the pages to hug them. I truly loved this book
Liz Nugent, author of Strange Sally Diamond
What a wonderful novel, bursting with life. Kit de Waal is a writer who knows all the secret longings of the human heart
Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of Ordinary Time
Beautiful. De Waal has the power to astound, to lift and console, to make life with her sentences
Donal Ryan, author of The Queen of Dirt Island