Wishes and Tears

By: Dee Williams

Narrated by: Nadia May

When a naïve encounter at a coronation party leaves 16-year-old Janet Slater pregnant, there's no question in her scandalized parents' minds of her keeping the baby. Bundled off to a home for unmarried mothers in South London, Janet is about to face the hardest moment of her sheltered life, alone. Forced to give her tiny daughter up for adoption, Janet promises her that one day, come what may, she'll find her.

In the years that follow, Janet builds her life around her secret, and Paula, her lost daughter, is never far from her thoughts. One day, her searching pays off, and the road to their longed-for reunion seems clear. But then a new shadow falls across the fragile happiness of both their lives.

©1999 Dee Williams (P)2000 Blackstone Audio Inc.

Critic reviews

"Nadia May excels in just this type of light romantic story, and brings all her skills to the fore....her strong and not always nice women take on clear lives and personalities even beyond the text." (AudioFile)

Wonderful and Touching

This is a wonderful and touching listen. I enjoyed it very much.

Superficial and drawn-out

This book was a real disappointment. The characters seemed superficial and hard to relate to. The author develops the main character, Janet, into such a spineless victim of fate throughout her life that I found it hard to have much empathy for her. Also, the entire book is stuffed full of amazingly simplistic stereotypes -- overly strict ministers, naive single mothers hoping that the fathers of their babies will miraculously want to share their lives, a free-wheeling married man interested only in sex, abusive adoptive parents, and a too-good-to-be true reunion of an adopted child and her biological mother after 25 years of being separated. At times, all of this bordered on the ridiculous, and the only reason I finished listening to the book is because I used one credit on it! Also of serious concern is the very negative way adoption is presented in this book. Adoptive parents are portrayed as unloving and dangerous, with only superficial feelings for their child, and the biological mother is painted as a desperate victim. This is not a book to be shared with an family built by adoption, and I think the negative stereotypes of adoption could potentially be very upsetting for an adoptive child. Nadia May was an excellent narrator as usual, and her narration was the only thing that made this book worth listening to. If you're looking for a sensitive book about adoption, stay away from this one.