I don’t usually like romance novels, but I do love Rosie Walsh’s novels. That might seem strange when often her novels are categorised as romance, but for me there’s much more to them than the more formulaic romances I see. Rosie Walsh creates such complex characters, facing heart-wrenching situations. This is definitely the case for our narrator Carrie Cole who’s a surgeon by profession, but since the premature birth of her twins has been more focused on home life. She and her husband Robin live in a draughty cottage on the moors, with a small ‘Roof’ (AirB&B) holiday let next door in the old piggery. Robin works in the world of medical philanthropy, matching investors to areas they can support medical causes and this is how the couple met. Nearby, her Dad lives with his wife Nicola, but he’s recently been struggling with dementia and may need to move into a home. Both Carrie and her sister Maya have a complex relationship with their mum, who is an international activist and charity worker. Carrie has been feeling the urge to return to work and has put out feelers with her old mentor Yanika about what steps she would have to take in order to level up to the required standard. There’s an event coming up for Roof hosts in Sweden, where Yanika works and they discuss meeting up for a conversation. She could do both in one trip. Carrie has never left the children overnight, although she knows they’re perfectly safe with Robin, in fact he gives her his blessing in the form of a generous booking of a lovely hotel near to the venue. Carrie had been looking at cheaper Roof accommodation, when a familiar name and face appeared on the screen. All of a sudden Carrie’s mind sweeps back to her twenties, where she’s dancing barefoot on a Thai beach with her new husband, Johan, mere moments before Thai police swarmed the beach with guns and arrested him. Carrie knows that Johan was sentenced to twenty years in a Bangkok prison, so how can he be in Sweden hosting a beautiful lakeside retreat?
There were so many questions I wanted to ask during this novel, as Carrie’s narrative follows her present and a deeply traumatic past that she thought was buried, This is a love story but it’s also a mystery, as we see how the couple met when he came into the hospital with a trauma patient he’d helped. He travelled with them into the hospital. Carrie’s connection to him is immediate, but it’s incredibly deep and even though she knows she can’t pursue anything with him, she can’t stop thinking about him. Slowly, through flashbacks we piece together their story and I was devastated for both of them. Carrie pieced herself together after Johan’s court case with the help of her family, particularly her mother who had flown out to Thailand to use her influence and local contacts. Over time Carrie has hardened her heart towards Johan, feeling both betrayed and abandoned by him. Abandonment is a big deal for Carrie and her sister, after they were removed from their mother’s care as children when her advocacy and activism were so absorbing she’d overlooked their safety. Since then Carrie and Maya lived with their father who had a more stable home life. Both girls show signs of abandonment issues and a tendency to self-medicate their feelings. Carrie doesn’t eat when stressed and Maya has issues with alcohol, both of them display displacement activity like cleaning madly when they’re in distress. Robin has proved himself to be a safe harbour for Carrie and she calls him her rock. However, she can’t deny that she wants to know what happened to Johan and the urge to see him is stronger than she expected. I could understand why she needed this, to have someone ripped from your life in this way is devastating, but even worse would be the questions: was Johan really trafficking drugs? If not why did he plead guilty? How did he end up back in Sweden and when? Lost love is painful enough but when you’re left unsure of what was real there’s no sense of closure, Can Carrie meet with Johan and get her answers without her carefully balanced life back in the UK imploding?
I really understood Carrie and I believed in her love story with Johan. Their connection leaps off the page like a flame and never goes out. I also had so much time for Robin, who is an incredibly supportive husband and dad. I was willing Carrie to be honest with him and explain why she still needed the answers. Carrie’s inner voice is so powerful that I believed in her utterly. She has the problems of every working mum who has gone through a traumatic pregnancy with incredibly premature twins and all the ailments that come alongside that. Her little boy still struggles with asthma and her instinct to be with them is a definite response to her mother’s inability to put her and Maya first. Carrie doesn’t want her children to ever doubt her love and commitment to them, but that has come at a high price for her own goals. Perhaps she’s even denied a strong part of who she is – that drive and ambition to the best doesn’t just disappear. She berates herself for thinking about Johan, telling herself she’s very lucky and has everything she needs, but does she? I loved how the author gave Carrie room to ask questions of herself and her closest relationships. Is there a part of her that chose to hide away after the birth of the children? Although she loves the feeling of being cared for and supported, where does caring end and control begin? In some ways her pursuit of Johan and the answers isn’t about her feelings for him, but her feelings for herself and the person she was when they met, I loved how Johan called her Carrie Cole, as if only her full name could encompass all the things she is. Part of me wanted their love to still be there, but the more rational part of me knows that long term relationships and parenthood are tough. Often what we long for in past relationships is a fantasy, one that doesn’t include vomit on the rug, temper tantrums and a Dad that’s slowly losing his sense of reality. Can Johan really be all that Carrie sees through her younger, love filled eyes?
Once the questions start there’s no stopping this complex tale from unravelling and the tension builds as we realise there’s so much that Carrie doesn’t know. As Johan realises that Carrie truly knew nothing from their final moments in front of the courthouse in Bangkok he’s he’s confused. Has she really only just found out a week ago when she looked for accommodation in Sweden? He asks why nobody told her. But who should have told her? Who in her protective and much loved inner circle has been keeping secrets? Can she cope with another betrayal? The answers, when they came, were totally unexpected.. Nothing here is exactly as it seems, for both us and Carrie. What happened on her wedding day in Thailand created a huge scar across her timeline, with her life divided into before and after as if severed from each other, Now she knows there were tiny unseen strands of connection and the cut was never as clean as she thought. Despite telling herself, ever since that day, to make decisions with her head could her heart and her gut have been right along? This really was a heart-breaking love story, with so much depth and emotion for the reader to relate too. I was rooting for Carrie, both with her ambitions to return to work and her personal life. I felt an affinity with her discovery that she had allowed herself to become small and knew that only time alone, recovering and accepting the truth would help her make the right choices. Yet there was still an impulsive and romantic part of me hoping that love would find a way.
Out in June 2026 from MacMillan
Meet the Author
Rosie Walsh is the internationally bestselling author of two novels, the global smash hit THE MAN WHO DIDN’T CALL, and – new for 2022 – THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, a heart-wrenching, keep-you-up-all-night emotional thriller, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and stayed in the German top ten for several weeks.
Rosie Walsh lives on a medieval farm in Devon, UK, with her partner and two young children, after years living and travelling all over the world as a documentary producer and writer.
The Man Who Didn’t Call (UK) / Ghosted (US) was her first book under her own name, and was published around the world in 2018, going on to be a multimillion bestseller.
Prior to writing under her own name she wrote four romantic comedies under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson. When she isn’t parenting or writing, Rosie can be found walking on Dartmoor, growing vegetables and throwing raves for adults and children in leaking barns.
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