The Lifeline

I picked this up just looking for something fairly lightweight and entertaining. I wasn’t entirely certain I’d get on with it, and I think that first impression was pretty on the mark but it ended up a bit deeper than I expected which was good.

It’s mostly the story of Kate, a new mum who’s feeling out of her depth, and Phoebe, a mental health nurse who has just been broken up with by her boyfriend. To begin with I found the setup pretty pedestrian and wasn’t finding it particularly interesting. But the characters grew on me as the book went on. They very much came to life when things started to go awry. The depictions of new motherhood not being a bed of roses were particularly good. And Phoebe as the nurse who’s looking after everyone except herself was entirely believable.

It takes a long time for the characters to meet up, and when they do it’s at an open water swimming group which is the thread that ties the whole book together. I didn’t realise when I started reading that this was a sequel. Page has written a previous book called The Lido which, I gather, is about Kate and other friends saving a London Lido from closure. This one is set in Somerset where Kate has moved out to. I enjoyed this book as a standalone and probably won’t go back and read that one but I think that you probably could do if you wanted to even though (I think) this one has a few spoilers about how that book turns out.

So in the end I quite enjoyed it and it was pretty good as a feel good read that doesn’t shy away from the darker side of mental health.