My grateful thanks to Sophie Goodfellow of FMcM for sending me a copy of This Could Be Us by Claire McGowan in return for an honest review. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Already available in other formats, This Could Be Us is released in paperback by Corsair on 7th March 2024 and is available for purchase through the links here.

This Could Be Us

Fifteen years ago, Kate walked out on her family. Moving across the world, from the suburbs of England to glamorous LA, she cut all ties to her former existence and started afresh. Her ex-husband Andrew was left to pick up the pieces, caring for their disabled daughter and angry, confused son. But Kate’s past has finally caught up with her. Now, she must return to the life she abandoned and reckon with what she did.

Following a fractured family over a period of twenty years, This Could Be Us is an extraordinarily moving story of family, guilt, love and hope.

My Review of This Could Be Us

Kate’s life is imploding.

This Could Be Us is an uncomfortable, powerful and affecting story about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who behave deplorably badly and bravely heroically in a messy, wonderful, exploration of what it is to try to live your life. At times there’s an almost dystopian feel to the narrative and yet terrifyingly, it is so firmly rooted in our present world. 

Initially I wasn’t keen on the the plot structure as Kate’s past is interwoven with her present day timeline and with dated parts relating to Andrew, because I had to concentrate on what was happening when. That was until I realised that the fragmented, disjointed pattern was in fact highly skilled in conveying how Kate feels shattered and broken by Kirsty’s birth and rare disability and how our lives are not simply linear, but ebb and flow with different experiences and emotions that are not always easy to contemplate or deal with. In fact, the structure of This Could Be Us is absolutely right for the story.

The characters are complex, humane and layered. I can see how those with a strong maternal instinct might find Kate’s relationship with her children hard to accept, but I thought she conveyed a raw honesty in her anger and grief that was eminently understandable. Her flaws are huge but she is so intelligently portrayed that she engenders true compassion. Her actions afford redemption as well as sanction so that reading about Kate leads the reader to question their own acceptance of morality.

I found Olivia equally fascinating because her role in Andrew, Kirsty and Adam’s life is almost unsettling. With an awkward relationship with her own daughter because of Olivia’s mental health, she simultaneously has a dynamism and strength that illustrates how we all function on different levels with sometimes conflicting personas depending on our situations. Olivia is stoic, unstable, weak and courageous.

What Claire McGowan does in This Could Be Us is to strip back each individual – even the seemingly impermeable Connor – and lay them raw and vulnerable in front of the reader in a powerful, visceral and emotive way. 

The themes of the novel are equally powerful. There’s an exploration of the practicalities of raising a child with profound challenges that is so vivid it made me appreciate my own life all the more. Elements of parenthood, mental health, addiction, insecurity, the need to belong and be appreciated are just some of the aspects to be found here, but above all else there is an exploration of family and how that is a fluid, amorphous definition. I didn’t find This Could Be Us an easy read, and although it’s quite brief it took me a long time because it is so intense, but I found it a compelling and important one. 

This Could Be Us is a story that could, in a twist of fate, belong to any one of us and shows to perfection that we should never judge others until we have walked in their shoes. It is a book to make you rage, weep and storm and I found it both searing and unforgettable.  

About Claire McGowan

Claire McGowan was born in 1981 in a small Irish village where the most exciting thing that ever happened was some cows getting loose on the road. She published her first novel in 2012 and followed it up with many others in the crime fiction genre, as well as in women’s fiction, writing as Eva Woods.

She has had three radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and her thrillers, What You Did and The Other Wife both went to number one on Kindle in the US and UK.

She ran the UK’s first MA in crime writing for five years, and regularly teaches and talks about writing. Her first non-fiction project, the true-crime book The Vanishing Triangle, was released in 2022.

For further information, follow Claire on Twitter/X @inkstainsclaire or visit her website. You’ll also find Claire on Instagram and Facebook.