I’m delighted to finally be able to share with your my review for The Man In The Needlecord Jacket! A huge thank you to the lovely Anne Cater and Linda MacDonald for their patience with me when I firstly couldn’t post due to moving and then due to no internet.
The Man in the Needlecord Jacket in available now in paperback and ebook here.
Book Blurb:
The Man in the Needlecord Jacket follows the story of two women who are each struggling to let go of a long-term destructive partnership. Felicity is reluctant to detach from her estranged archaeologist husband and, after being banished from the family home, she sets out to test the stability of his relationship with his new love, Marianne.
When Felicity meets Coll, a charismatic artist, she has high hopes of being distracted from her failed marriage. What she doesn’t know is that he has a partner, Sarah, with whom he has planned a future. Sarah is deeply in love with Coll, but his controlling behaviour and associations with other women have always made her life difficult. When he becomes obsessed with Felicity, Sarah’s world collapses and a series of events is set in motion that will challenge the integrity of all the characters involved.
The Man in the Needlecord Jacket is a thought-provoking book, written from the perspectives of Sarah and Felicity. The reader is in the privileged position of knowing what’s going on for both of the women, while each of them is being kept in the dark about a very important issue.
Inspired by the work of Margaret Atwood and Fay Weldon, Linda explores the issue of mental abuse in partnerships and the grey area of an infidelity that is emotional, not physical. The book will appeal to readers interested in the psychology of relationships, as well as fans of Linda’s ‘Lydia’ series.
My Review:
The Man In The Needlecord Jacket is an emotional and compelling book that I wasn’t expecting to like as much as I did.
The story follows two women who are both unwittingly attracted to the same man Coll. From the beginning the reader is privy to both sides of the story as they take it in turns to describe their experiences with Coll. This intimate, fly-on-the-wall glance into the relationship really make for fascinating reading. I soon felt completely immersed into their lives and I felt like i knew both of them intimately. It is unusual for a story to feature relationships involving older characters so I found it very interesting to see what affect this had on their relationship and how it meant it was approached differently.
My favourite character was Sarah. I found i could really relate to her and her experiences as she reminded me a bit of myself in the past. She brought out a lot of emotions in me and I found myself alternating between wanting to scream at her to wise up and wishing I could give her a cuddle. The character development for her throughout the book was amazing thought and I was very pleased to see the person she had become at the end. The character development for Felicity was also brilliantly done. I started off not really liking her but ended up admiring her and the way she dealt with things so bravely.
This book covers the difficult subject of mental abuse, which I wouldn’t have realised was happening if it hadn’t been mentioned in the blurb. I think this is the difficulty with it, that it is very hard to prove as it is so subtle. In this the author has done a great job in helping to raise awareness for it.
The ending was brilliant! It made me want to stand up and cheer as it was so good. This will definitely be book I’m going to remember and be recommending to people for a while!
Thank you to Anne Cater and Linda MacDonald for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.
About The Author:
Linda MacDonald is the author of four novels: Meeting Lydia and the stand-alone sequels, A Meeting of a Different Kind, The Alone Alternative and The Man in the Needlecord Jacket. All Linda’s books are contemporary adult fiction, multi-themed, but with a focus on relationship issues.
After studying psychology at Goldsmiths’, Linda trained as a secondary science and biology teacher. She taught these subjects for several years before moving to a sixth-form college to teach psychology. The first two novels took ten years in writing and publishing, using snatched moments in the evenings, weekends and holidays. In 2012, she gave up teaching to focus fully on writing.
Linda was born and brought up in Cockermouth, Cumbria and now lives in Beckenham in Kent.
Follow The Blog Tour:
If you liked the sound of this book from my review, do go back and check out these fabulous bloggers reviews too!
Over The Rainbow Blog 
I like that the author focuses on older characters, not something you see often. A read I think I would enjoy.
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Sounds brilliant and that cover!!
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