Keith Stuart certainly knows the way to my heart and my tear ducts. I read both A Boy Made of Blocks and Days of Wonder with tears rolling down my face towards the end. What's so unusual about that, you say? Well I wasn't crying because I was sad; I was just so unbelievably moved and hadn't realised that Hannah, Tom and the whole theatre gang had set up home in my heart.

Hannah knows that there's an expiry date on her life; she has been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and one day her useless heart will cease to work. Hannah has the most amazing dad in Tom who will do anything for her - she is his whole world. Tom has brought Hannah up as a single dad but he hasn't been alone; Hannah has been brought up in Tom's theatre and this cast of colourful characters are her family.

Tom has a lot to contend with in addition to Hannah's illness when the council threaten the theatre with closure. The Willow Tree isn't just a theatre though, it feels like a home for so many people and it's a place where magic can happen when the curtain rises. Hannah needs to know that Tom will still have the theatre when she is gone and she is such an amazing young lady that she somehow finds the strength to fight the closure whilst fighting to keep her heart beating. It just shows you that when something is so important to you, you can find the strength from deep within you to fight for it.

Written from both Tom's and Hannah's perspectives, and interspersed with letters to 'Willow', I just knew that I would be in floods of tears at the end and I wasn't wrong. What surprised me was that my tears started before the end as the magic of the theatre was performed so beautifully through the words of Keith Stuart. There was never going to be a happy ending where cardiomyopathy is involved, but the strength and resolve of this young girl was so moving that I can't help but think of Hannah with a smile on my face.

There is definitely a strong sense of family in Keith Stuart's writing; not only parental love but the warmth of an extended family, whether related or not. The amazing characters all wear their hearts on their sleeves and I was drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I can't explain it but I felt part of the family myself and I felt every emotion with them from the heartbreak of loss to the explosion of first love. Such beautiful writing can't help but elicit a myriad of emotions in the reader and I greatly admire Keith Stuart for his ability to do this.

Days of Wonder is tremendously heartwarming and so unbelievably poignant; it reminds us to live for the day and enjoy every second of our precious lives. Keith Stuart has written such a completely stunning and emotional book that I recommend with all my heart. ❤

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion. ( )

A lovely heart warming drama with some brilliant characters ( )

Tear-jerker.
I've just finished this, with tears running down my face. Of the two, I probably marginally preferred A Boy made of Blocks, but this was a close second. It just took me a little longer to get into.

Hannah has known from very young that she had a faulty heart, she never planned for a future and took every day as it came. Her father, Tom, deals with the problem as only someone with a theatrical background and a job at a theatre, can. He puts on elaborate productions for her birthday and makes her whole life mystical. He was just a super-fantastic dad! Her mother had left to pursue her own interests when Hannah was just three years old, so the folk at the theatre became her family.

When we meet her she is a teenager, just beginning to find boys attractive and starting to pull at the apron strings. But also, her heart problem is starting to become more serious. She wants her Dad to go out and start dating again, she's worried he will be all alone if she dies. He has some pretty cheesy relationships but there's plenty to laugh about too.

There are some fabulous characters, some as flamboyant as you would expect at a theatre and some just normal people for whom the theatre is an escape.

An excellent story with an ending that could have gone either way and I liked that I never knew which way.
Recommended. ( )

For lovers of fairy stories and of real life stories, a gentle but heart-wrenching coming-of-age story which also addresses the difficulty parents have in making the transition when children fight for their independence.

Hannah and her father Tom are both caught up in the life of their local theatre and have a group of close friends of all ages who share this mutual interest. In this story the characters are varied but not stereotypical and every one of the people we meet gives the reader a way to like them. The author too seems to be caught up in their lives and only reluctantly lets them go at the end of the novel. This sense of affectionate involvement is quite intense and I found myself trying to 'wish' the plot to work out nicely for everyone.

This book will be enjoyed by all the readers who praised Keith Stuart's A Boy Made of Blocks. It is another, but very different, story of real people facing real problems and coping with, mostly, dignity. There is pain and darkness but there are plenty of comedic moments along the way, together with compassion and more than a smattering of joy and magic. ( )