The Notekeeper - Hannah Treave - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Hannah Treave

NARRATOR: Sofia Zervudachi

GENRE: Women's Fiction.

RATING: 2.5 Stars.

In a Nutshell: Minor focus on the notes, major focus on the notekeeper’s personal life. Has some good moments and ought to click with the right reader. Will work better if read with the heart and not the head. This was not my kind of book (unlike what I had assumed), so I’ll be somewhat lenient.

Story Synopsis:

After losing her young son in an accident two years ago, Zoe fled her hometown of Sydney, Australia without informing anyone (not even her husband David) and arrived in the UK to forget her grief. Currently working as a hospice nurse, Zoe is also an unofficial ‘notekeeper’, helping patients to write final notes to their loved ones. Her new boss, Ben, isn’t happy about her getting personally involved in her patients’ lives. However, the two of them have more in common than they realised. Just as things seem bright again, grief looms around the corner.

The story is written in the third person limited perspective of Zoe.

Where the book worked for me:

😍 The prologue is excellent and set the right tone for the book. (Too bad it didn’t continue that way.)

😍 There are plenty of UK and Australian locales explored through the scenes. I enjoyed the vividness with which these scenes were written. The places appeared stunning even to those who might not have seen them in real life.

😍 It does offer a good message about living in the moment and not letting life go by with unresolved grudges.

😍 Such a pretty cover with one of my favourite shades of blue in the background!

Where the book left me with mixed feelings:

😐 Zoe is supposed to be in her mid-forties, but she is penned more like someone in her twenties. (No offence to that age group; I am just talking of the character’s voice.) Her constant “giggling” got on my grumpy nerves.

😐 I loved *almost* everything connected to the notes: how they provided closure, how they ranged from emotional to funny, how they were written for and delivered to varied people (and ‘non-people’),… The process fit in well with the key idea of the book, and made sense with Zoe’s personality and situation. However, I didn’t like how Zoe read the notes aloud to the intended recipient. Even if she had written them, surely the right thing would have been for her to hand them over to the person and allow them to read the same.

😐 Ben having a twin was a novel experience. I haven’t read many women’s fiction novels where the male lead has a twin sister. Their rapport was excellent. But during some crucial scenes near the end, she gets totally side-lined. It was implausible! (Something Zoe did during these scenes also BUGGED me, but as that is a major spoiler, I can’t go into more details.)

😐 While the ending was too convenient, it was the right level of hopeful and bittersweet.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

☹ The character development is quite ad hoc. People are angry, people patch up, again they are crabby, again they are lovey-dovey. Many scenes proceed mainly by virtue of the character’s mood swings. This is not the writing I expect from established authors.

☹ For a book where three main characters work as nurses in the hospice care facility, there is surprisingly little about the actual care. Most of the “working hours” are depicted with the characters chatting with each other and passing remarks on various people. There are even offensive remarks about a staff member’s rumpled appearance. I would have preferred a more detailed insight into what goes into a nurse’s work balanced with the lighter side.

☹ While Zoe’s role as a nurse is good, she still is intrusive at times. She is perceived to be a professional superstar, but her domineering nature overpowered her niceties. Moreover, she is highly judgemental and interfering in her personal life. As she was our central character, I tried my best to like her more, but after every few pages, she did something that pushed her down my esteem once again. Most importantly, she spoke of closure and forgiveness to her hospice patients, but she herself didn’t follow the same with David. Her treatment of David was horrible, and I can’t believe the story clearly expected us to side with Zoe after how she behaved with him. It was totally unconvincing.

☹ I had assumed this to be an emotionally impactful drama with a focus on handling grief and finding joy in life again. The book does have that, but these elements are overshadowed by the romance. I wanted more focus on the notekeeper’s professional life than her personal upheavals.

☹ There is a supposed ‘twist’ in the situation of two of the key characters, but there are so many blatant clues to this that most readers will see it coming as clearly as an elephant in the savannah; there’s just no subtlety to the hints. (Keep in mind that I was listening to this at 2x speed and I still caught a multitude of these hints. If I had been reading this, I would have been more annoyed at how obvious the writing was.)

The audiobook experience:

The audiobook, clocking at a little more than 13 hours, is narrated by Sofia Zervudachi. She was amazing, proving the right voices and emotions to all scenes. If this is your kind of book, and you are an audiobook reader, then you can certainly opt for the audio version of this one. Newbie audiobook listeners might also like to try this on audio as the narration is quite straightforward, with a single timeline and limited characters ensuring no confusion if you are not used to this format.

I don’t mind stories being formulaic; that is to be expected in this genre. But I do prefer them to have a greater emotional impact rather than proving only a surface-level exploration of feelings. Relatable, likeable characters would have been a bonus.

I can see how this book might be a tearjerker for a few readers. I'm anyway not much of a crier while reading - it takes a lot to get me going the ‘sniffly’ way, especially for predictable books. But if you are someone who loves romance novels, who always keeps tissues at hand while reading women’s fiction, and are okay with straightforward, somewhat schmaltzy stories, you will enjoy this far more than I did.

2.5 stars, rounding up wherever needed, for the excellent narration and for the fact that I was the wrong reader for this book.

My thanks to Bolinda Audio and NetGalley for the ALC of “The Notekeeper”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.