Three Days Grace

5 Star Review

Click HERE to Purchase Your Copy Today!

Editorial Book Review:

By Fabiana Barbery

Jeremy Bradley-Silverio Donato sets his novel in Paris, which is the right city for a story about beautiful surfaces concealing tremendous damage. Five people gather in a hotel on the eve of a trip to South Africa. What begins as a bon voyage dinner becomes something else entirely when Lynne carries a secret into the room that none of the others know yet: Nick's father died that morning. The decision to withhold that information, and then the decision to release it, sends everything underneath these five lives crashing to the surface.

Reading Three Days Grace produces the specific, breathless tension of watching people try to maintain composure while something enormous is happening beneath the social fabric. Donato has a gift for the scene that is doing two things simultaneously, the conversation on the surface and the history beneath it, and that layering gives the novel its particular intensity. Nick, at the center of it all, is the kind of character who breaks readers open before they quite realize it is happening. One Goodreads reviewer wrote that she could not see through the tears some pages, which is the most honest description of what this book does to you.

The story it is telling beneath the Paris hotel corridors and the careful dinner conversation is the story of two brothers, one present and one absent, and the lingering trauma that has shaped the living one in ways he has spent his entire adult life trying to outrun. The childhood sexual abuse that haunts the narrative is handled with the restraint and gravity it deserves, present throughout without being exploited for shock. Donato clearly understands that the most devastating thing about this kind of wound is not its drama but its silence.

Emma Woolf called it compelling, eloquent and insightful, a book that stayed with her long after the final page. The Independent Review of Books described it as a probing look into the painful fallout of broken families. Both assessments honor what the book actually is: a short novel with an enormous interior, one that understands that healing is possible without pretending it is easy or complete.

If you or someone you know is struggling with trauma or thoughts of suicide, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available by calling or texting 988.

About the Author

Jeremy Bradley-Silverio Donato

Jeremy Bradley-Silverio Donato is originally from the United States and now lives in Paris. He is a graduate of Oxford and a respected voice on organizational leadership, innovation, and culture.