Friday 29 July 2016

Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon

Try Not to Breathe
By Holly Seddon
Published by Atlantic Books (Paperback - 14 July 2016)
ISBN: 978-1782396703




Publisher's description

Just remember to breathe. Alex is sinking. Slowly but surely, she's cut herself off from everything but her one true love - drink. Until she's forced to write a piece about a coma ward, where she meets Amy. Amy is lost. When she was fifteen, she was attacked and left for dead in a park. Her attacker was never found. Since then, she has drifted in a lonely, timeless place. She's as good as dead, but not even her doctors are sure how much she understands. Alex and Amy grew up in the same suburbs, played the same music, flirted with the same boys. And as Alex begins to investigate the attack, she opens the door to the same danger that has left Amy in a coma...

My verdict
Try Not to Breathe is yet another book that I devoured in just a few sittings. It's an intense, beautifully written psychological thriller. It's very different from the usual trends of missing children/teenagers or unreliable narrators. It was like a breath of fresh air. It's so cleverly plotted.

Alex is a freelance journalist whose life is governed by alcohol. Due to her addiction, her marriage has crumbled, her ex-husband is now with another woman and she's lost her job. She's given a commission to write an article about a doctor who is working with coma patients - this is her chance to get her life back on track. When Alex visits the ward, she becomes intrigued by the story of Amy, a young woman who was left for dead following a brutal attack 15 years earlier. Amy's attacker has never been found. Alex is determined to discover Amy's story by delving into her past.

I was particularly intrigued by the medical background, and the author has clearly done her research into coma patients. In Try Not to Breathe, patients lying in a persistent vegetative state don't appear to interact with the outside world, but some doctors believe that some of them are still able to communicate - it's a case of discovering how.

Try Not to Breathe is a fantastic debut novel that keeps the reader guessing. I've had this book sitting on my Kindle for several months, and I'm now kicking myself as I should have read it sooner.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Thursday 28 July 2016

Unreliable narrators (Rebecca) by Flynn Berry - Blog Tour

I'm delighted to welcome Flynn Berry to my blog today to talk about unreliable narrators. Flynn's book Under the Harrow was published in e-book by W&N (Orion) on 14 June 2016.





Unreliable narrators: Rebecca
By Flynn Berry

My novel, Under the Harrow, is about a woman, Nora, investigating her sister’s murder. As the police inquiry unravels, Nora becomes obsessive and reckless. Some of my favorite books have unreliable narrators, who are duplicitous, volatile, and thrilling. 

The unnamed narrator in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier seems complicit in the mystery at the center of the book—the death of the first wife. Rebecca drowned in a sailing accident; her husband identified the body; he remarried. After the wedding, our narrator moves to Manderley, a Cornish estate. Rebecca is still everywhere in the house: her favorite flowers fill the rooms, and her stationery is still in the desk. Her bedroom has been left intact: “Those were her brushes on the dressing-table, that was her dressing gown and slippers laid out upon the chair.”    

What electrifies the book is the narrator’s pathological jealousy of the absent first wife. Her fascination with Rebecca, and the sailing accident that caused her death, seems somehow guilty. “It must be cold sailing out there in the bay,” she thinks, “beyond the beacon away on the headland.”

About Flynn Berry
Flynn Berry is a graduate of the Michener Center and has been awarded a Yaddo residency.  She graduated from Brown University.  Under the Harrow is her first novel.



Under the Harrow
by Flynn Berry
Published by W&N (e-book - 14 June 2016)



Publisher's description
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder.

Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.

Read my review here.

Follow the Blog Tour


Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry

Under the Harrow
By Flynn Berry
Published by W&N (E-book - 14 June 2016)


Publisher's description
When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder.

Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers.

My verdict
Under the Harrow is a highly atmospheric psychological thriller.

When Nora discovers her sister has been brutally murdered, she becomes overwhelmed with grief and distress. She doesn't trust the police, after she was assaulted as a teenager and her attacker was never found. And she can't stop thinking about her sister's death and all of the possible suspects. Could her sister's murder be related to her own traumatic experience 15 years earlier? As Nora's own investigations become an obsession, could they be leading her into danger?

Beginning just before Nora discovers her sister's body, the book filled with emotion and intrigue. Nora is a completely unreliable narrator - traumatised, paranoid and grieving, with hazy memories of her own past. She seems soulless, as if her attacker robbed her of her personality and individuality, turning her into just an empty husk.

Under the Harrow is more than just a murder mystery, as it explores the complex relationship between two sisters and the secrets they shared and withheld. Both sisters had moved away from their home town and moved on with their lives, although they still kept in touch. The author gets right into Nora's head - her thoughts, feelings and emotions. But since you only get to know Nora's version of events, and her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and irrational, it seems that she may not be remembering the whole truth.

The book kept me guessing all the way through. I had a whole list of suspects in my head, Nora being one of them. Was she involved? I'm not going to give away any spoilers here, so you'll just have to read the book to find out.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Click here to read Flynn Berry talking about Rebecca, one of her favourite unreliable narrators.

Wednesday 27 July 2016

Extract from Watching Edie (by Camilla Way) - Blog Tour

I am delighted to be today's stop on the BLOG TOUR for Camilla Way's Watching Edie, which is published by Harper Collins on 28 July 2016. 

Below is an extract from the book, followed by a link to my review. 






READ THE EXTRACT

Before
Year 11 leavers’ day, and everywhere you look girls are writing on each other’s shirts in felt-tip pen, drinking from Coke cans I think they’ve filled with something else, throwing flour bombs out of top-floor windows. I sit on the bench below the library window and watch. They’re all going up to the rec later to get drunk – I’d heard them talking about it in the loos. They hadn’t asked me, but I don’t really mind because Mum always worries if I’m back late. I see Nicola Gates over by the water fountain, but she turns away when I wave.
And that’s when I first see Edie. Walking across the forecourt in the direction of the main doors. As I watch, her face appearing then disappearing behind others in the crowd, she stops, her eyes squinting up at the building before darting around herself again and then finally landing upon me. I hold my breath. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so pretty before, not in real life.
Then there she is, standing right in front of me, and at first I’m too distracted by all the different parts of her to take in what she’s saying: the smell of the leather jacket she’s carrying over her arm, mixed with something else, something soft and appley, her eyes, big and golden brown with lots of black eyeliner, pale mauve varnish on her nails. In the hollow of her clavicle is a little gold locket with a tiny green stone in the middle. If you were to put your finger beneath it you’d feel the jump jump jump of her pulse.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘What?’
She smiles. ‘The office. Where is it?’ Her voice is clear and sure with a northern accent – Manchester maybe.
Of all the people she could have stopped to ask, she’d picked me. I get to my feet. ‘I’m going that way myself,’ I tell her, though I wasn’t. ‘I’ll walk with you if you like.’
She nods, shrugs. ‘Yeah, OK. Ta.’
As we walk, I see Sheridan Alsop and Amy Carter standing by the water fountain. They stop talking and watch us as we pass. I have a mad impulse to link my arm through hers, this stranger who walks beside me, and I imagine us strolling along like that, arm in arm like best friends. How amazed Amy and Sheridan would be to see that! I don’t though, of course. People don’t like it when you do that sort of thing, I’ve real­ized.
‘My name’s Heather,’ I tell her instead.
‘I’m Edie. Well, Edith really. But how lame’s that?’ She looks around herself then shakes her head, ‘Bloody hell, this place.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I know! Totally lame, isn’t it? Are you going to come to school here then?’
She nods. ‘Starting my A-levels in September.’
‘I’m doing my A-levels here too! What’re you studying? I’m taking Biology and Maths and Chemistry. I was going to do a language as well but Mum and Dad said it was pointless because it’s not what I need to read Medicine at uni. Best to concentrate on just the three. What with all my volunteering work and everything too. I’m going to be a doctor one day and—’ I stop myself, my mouth snapping shut. I always talk too much Mum says. I bite my lip, waiting for Edie to look at me the way the other girls do.

But she doesn’t, she only smiles again. Her long brown hair swings in front of her face and she pushes it away, tucking it behind her ear. ‘I’m doing Art,’ she tells me. ‘And photography. I’m going to go to art college in London. Saint Martins prob­ably,’ she adds with breezy certainty. And she explains that she’s recently moved down here to Fremton from Manchester with her mum. She has this way of talking, like she’s a bit bored by everything, looking around herself like she finds it all a bit of a joke, but all the while glancing back at me, including me as if I’m in on the joke too. It’s nice. I could stare at her for hours.
We’ve already reached the office, even though I’d taken her the long way round. ‘It’s in here,’ I say, and I’m about to tell her that I’ll wait for her, that I’ll show her around after if she wants, but she’s already moving away. ‘OK. Thanks, yeah?’ she says. ‘See you later.’

The door swings shut behind her. Edie. Eedee. I turn the word over and over in my mind on the walk home, trying it out for size, tucking it away for safekeeping like it’s a precious locket on a fine gold chain.


Watching Edie
By Camilla Way
Published by Harper Collins (28 July 2016)
ISBN: 978-0008159016




Publisher's description
THERE ARE SOME FRIENDS YOU’LL NEVER FORGET…
NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY
BEFORE
Edie is the friend that Heather has always craved. But one night, it goes terrifyingly wrong. And what started as an innocent friendship ends in two lives being destroyed.
AFTER
Sixteen years later, Edie is still rebuilding her life. But Heather isn’t ready to let her forget so easily. It’s no coincidence that she shows up when Edie needs her most.
NOW
Edie or Heather?
Heather or Edie?
Someone has to pay for what happened, but who will it be?

Reviewer taster: It's a totally bewitching book about friendship, lies and secrets... The writing is chilling, disturbing and unsettling. 
Read my full review here.


Follow the Blog Tour