#BlogTour: The Conviction of Cora Burns @novelcarolyn @noexitpress @annecater #TheConvictionOfCoraBurns #RandomThingsTours

Book Synopsis:

To believe in her future, she must uncover her past…

Birmingham, 1885.

Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.

Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood. Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora…?

With the power and intrigue of Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions and Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done, Carolyn Kirby’s stunning debut takes the reader on a heart-breaking journey through Victorian Birmingham and questions where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts.

The Conviction Of Cora Burns is published on the 21st March 2019 in ebook and paperback. You can pre-order your copy of both using the link below.

My Review:

Wow this was an amazing historical novel which manages to be incredibly heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting. This is definitely a book which will stay with me for a long time, particularly due to the human stories told in its pages.

The historical detail in this book is brilliant and helps to transport the reader into Victorian England. It was a very harsh, brutal time to live in particularly if you were poor and the reality of this is obvious throughout this book. The author certainly doesn’t hold back on describing some of the miserable situations people found themselves in which was truly heartbreaking and deeply affecting to read about. As a mother I found the stories involving the children some of the hardest and most uncomfortable to read about, especially as one of the children was a similar age to my children. I made sure they all got extra hugs after reading this.

The mystery surrounding Cora’s past and the house she finds employment in is slowly unraveled in a very tantalisingly way. I enjoyed going on the journey with Cora and experiencing everything through her eyes. There were lots of twists that I didn’t see coming and helped keep me very intrigued as the various threads of the story are slowly pulled together. I felt very absorbed in the story and thoroughly gripped by everything going on. This was definitely one of the best historical books I have read recently!

The ending was brilliant and I found I had tears in my eyes whilst reading it. I was so glad it ended this way and felt it was a great way to end the book.

Huge thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to No Exit Press for my copy of this book which I received in exchange for an honest review. If you like emotional, dark and gripping historical fiction then you’ll love this book!

About The Author:

Originally from Sunderland, Carolyn Kirby studied history at St Hilda’s College, Oxford before working for social housing and then as a teacher of English as a foreign language. Her novel The Conviction of Cora Burns was begun in 2013 on a writing course at Faber Academy in London. The novel has achieved success in several competitions including as finalist in the 2017 Mslexia Novel Competition and as winner of the inaugural Bluepencilagency Award. Carolyn has two grown-up daughters and lives with her husband in rural Oxfordshire.