Read My Book! ~ Gone by Julie Elizabeth Powell

It’s been a while since we’ve had anyone review their own book, so thanks to our own reviewer Julie Elizabeth Powell for giving it a go!  If you’d like to participate, email us direct with a brief 10 sentence review of your own book.  It should not be a pitch, but an honest “outside yourself” review of the book. Include a book cover pic and author photo.  More details can be found here.

Gone by Julie Elizabeth Powell

I am the author of this book and I can honestly say that I learned more than I ever could have imagined from both its creation and during the many times of re-reading. Not least that my writing skills have certainly improved from that terrible first draft when all that was important was to ‘set down the story’ while the idea was still fresh.

Several drafts later, I found www.lulu.com and realised a dream…that at last I could put into ‘real print’ this important story that was in answer to the terrible life suffered by my daughter, Samantha, after she was severely brain-damaged at the age of two, surviving for a further seventeen years.

During those years, I often wondered ‘where she’d gone?’…my novel seemingly spiralling into being, as if from nowhere, yet the seed was there all the time, growing into a fully formed world, as if merely waiting to be discovered.

Gone is a fantasy which tackles the themes of loss and grief but it is also about following an identity, which has been stripped from its owner. It’s about life and what makes us who we are and how the bonds of love can never be broken. And, if I have learned nothing else…it is about hope.

It is not quite like any other story, as it is not about death in the true sense though shifts from supposed reality to other plains of existence. It also takes surprising and humorous twists and turns, dealing with ‘loss’ in a unique way.

Gone has been described as ‘a journey of wonder, perfect, beautiful, magnificent, captivating, moving and sprinkled with fantastic humour’ and ‘…for those of us with our own demons to vanquish…’ but if nothing else, it will most definitely make you think differently.

This book is available at Lulu.com.