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.

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Book Blurb:

You can run from your past, but it will always catch up with you…
 
Susie was forced to do something she will always regret: giving her baby son up for adoption. Everything that led to this child, this choice, had to be buried and forgotten.

Her secret echoes down through the years, tainting everything it touches. Her husband wonders why his wife is so distant. Her daughters can’t understand their changeable mother. 

Susie knows her past is pushing her family apart, and the guilt is eating her up, but she can’t escape the longing for her lost son. No-one but Susie knows the whole story, and when her daughters discover a piece of the puzzle, she must face the question she has struggled with for most of her life:

Would the truth bring them back together, or break them?
 
From the bestselling author of The Silent Wife, The Secret Child is a heartbreaking and unputdownable novel about family secrets and lies. Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty, Jojo Moyes and Diane Chamberlain.

My Review:

The Secret Child is a very emotional and heartbreaking story that will stay with me for a long time.  It is told in two parts, 1 from the point of view of Susie and the second from her younger daughter Grace.  This is very interesting way of telling the story as it helps you to see the characters from different angles which make is easier to understand them and how they act.

It is hard to believe that such attitudes towards unmarried mothers and children born out of wedlock existed only 50 years ago and that mothers were faced with such awful decisions in the face of societies prejudices.  In this Kerry Fisher writes about a difficult subject very sensitively creating some very poignant moments which had me rushing to hug my kids even when they were asleep.  I often found myself on the verge of tears reading about her feelings on having to adopt her son and hoping for a happy ending where she would be able to keep him.  The author has obviously done her research as the feelings that Susie feels after losing her baby are very similar to mine after I lost my baby, albeit in different circumstances.  I must admit that I found some of these passages quite hard to read and often had to put the book down for a little while when it got a little too emotional for me.

The book cleverly intersperses the present and the past which helps the reader to glean more knowledge about what happened and to understand more about why the characters acted the way they did.  This helped add to the emotional impact of the book especially as the reader becomes more aware of the whole story and how events transpired.

This is the first book by Kerry Fisher that I have read and I will definitely go back and check out some of her other books in future.

Huge thanks to Kim Nash at Bookouture and Netgalley for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Born in Peterborough, Kerry Fisher studied French and Italian at Bath University, followed by several years working as an English teacher in Corsica and Spain before topping the dizzying heights of holiday rep and grape picker in Tuscany. She eventually succumbed to ‘getting a proper job’ and returned to England to study Periodical Journalism at City University. After two years working in the features department at Essentials magazine in London, love carried her off to the wilds of the West Pennine moors near Bolton. She now lives in Surrey with her husband (of whisking off to Bolton fame), two teenagers and a very naughty lab/schnauzer called Poppy. Kerry can often be seen trailing across the Surrey Hills whistling and waving pieces of chicken while the dog practises her ‘talk to the tail’. In her third book, After The Lie, Kerry shamelessly exploits every embarrassing dog misdemeanour to create her fictional hound, Mabel.

Kerry has spent half her life talking about writing a novel, then several years at Candis magazine reviewing other people’s but it wasn’t until she took some online courses with the UCLA (University of California) that the dream started to morph into reality, culminating in the publishing of The Class Ceiling. The Avon imprint of HarperCollins picked it up and retitled it The School Gate Survival Guide, published summer 2014. Her second book, The Island Escape, came out in May 2015. It won first prize at the York Festival of Writing for the opening line: ‘I was wearing the wrong bra for sitting in a police cell’. Her latest book, After The Lie, the story of how small lies become more toxic as they pass down the generations, is out on 29 April 2016.

Best advice ever received: ‘This is fiction, we can skip the boring bits.’ Lynn Hightower, UCLA Writers’ Program. 

Read more of her thoughts on life at http://www.kerryfisherauthor.com or follow her on twitter at @kerryfswayne

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I’m thrilled to be on the blog blitz for the fantastic The Liverpool Girls.  This was a 5 star read for me and I really recommend it to everyone who likes historical fiction or a good saga.  The Liverpool Girls is available now in paperback and ebook here.

Book Blurb:

Will tragedy tear them apart – once and for all?

It’s 1966 and in Liverpool two sisters are about to have their lives turned upside down…

Sisters Carol and Jackie haven’t had the easiest of childhoods, but as they grow up and begin their own lives both hope for happier times ahead. Stylish Carol works in Lewis’s department store, while Jackie dreams of drama school, and a career on the stage.

But the sisters are heartbroken when they discover they have been dating the same man, and an unexpected pregnancy causes a rift between them. Parents Dora and Joe must overcome their past hurts and help their daughters, despite the meddling of Joe’s second wife Ivy.

As the sisters’ troubles spiral and difficult decisions must be made, can the family pull together – or will Jackie and Carol’s sisterly bond be destroyed forever?

The Liverpool Girls is a heart-breaking and compelling story of family, loss and love. Perfect for fans of Annie Groves, Anne Baker and Kitty Neale.

My Review:

I was immediately drawn into The Liverpool Girls and found myself quickly immersed in their story.

The author does a great job of setting the scene for this novel and I loved the descriptions of Liverpool in the 1960’s with the MOD’s, scooters and of course the fabulous music.  The writing just flows and makes the book very easy to read.  There is a lot of action in the book, withe events happening very fast which also helps keep the reader interested and makes the book hard to put down.  I looked that the author did this that way and didn’t dwell on certain situations when I felt it would have been easy to do this.  She didn’t take the easy option either which made the book seem more real and kept it very interesting.

It would have also been easy to write this book as a happy, sweet book but its not like that and I enjoyed reading about how the characters dealt with the situations that were thrown at them and how they were changed as a result of it.

I had a love/hate relationship with the two sisters.  There were times when I really related and felt for the two of them and the predicaments they found themselves in.  However there were other times when they really annoyed me with their over the top actions and selfishness.  Jackie was perfectly described in her reactions as a typical, love struck teenager and I recognised some of her behaviours from my own, misguided relationships at the same age.  My favourite character was Dora the sister’s mother.  I thought she was a very strong, loving character who really looked after her daughters and some of the passages regarding their mother-daughter relationship were very heart warming to read about.  I think all girls could do with a Dora type character in their lives!

The ending was very emotional and I thought it was a brilliant, brave way to end it.  I definitely had a tear in my eye as I read the last few pages and I was sorry to leave The Liverpool Girls and their world.

This is the first book by this author that I have read and the first book in this trilogy that I have read so I will definitely be going back to read the other books in the series.

Huge thanks to Kim Nash at Bookouture and Netgalley for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

 

 

 

Pam Howes was born in Cheshire. She is a retired Interior Designer who began writing seriously in the mid nineties. The idea for her first novel, set in the sixties, was inspired by her time as a teenager, working in a local record store and hanging around with musicians who frequented the business. That first novel evolved into a series set in the fictional town of Pickford, based on her home town of Stockport. Three Steps to Heaven; ‘Til I Kissed You; Always On My Mind; Not Fade Away, and That’ll Be The Day, follow the lives and loves through the decades of fictional Rock’n’Roll band The Raiders. Pam is a big fan of sixties music and it’s this love that compelled her to write the series. A stand-alone true-life romance, Fast Movin’ Train, set in the nineties, was published in early 2012. A new series of Fairground Romances, set in the sixties, begins with Cathy’s Clown, to be followed by Ruby Tuesday early 2016. Pam is mum to three adult daughters, grandma to seven assorted grandchildren, and roadie to one musician partner. She still lives in Cheshire and is currently involved in raising awareness of her home-town’s musical heritage with campaigns to have Blue Plaques erected on the walls of local clubs, The Manor Lounge and The Sinking Ship, where the likes of The Walker Brother’s, The Who and Jimi Hendrix played; now closed, but still firmly in the hearts of Stockport’s recycled teenagers.  

Pam recently signed a contract with the award winning publisher Bookouture and the first novel in her new trilogy, The Lost Daughter of Liverpool, will be on sale in February 2017

All books are available in Kindle format, paperback, and Fast Movin’ Train is also available as an audio book. 

Follow her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Pam-Howes-Author/260328010709267 

And Twitter @PamHowes1

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