I’m excited to be on the blog tour for The Fear by C. L Taylor and to have an extract to share.

The fear is available to buy in paperback and ebook now both for the bargain price of £2.99.  You can buy a copy of both here.

Before I share my extract with you, here is a little about the book.

Book Blurb:

Sometimes your first love won’t let you go…

When Lou Wandsworth ran away to France with her teacher Mike Hughes, she thought he was the love of her life. But Mike wasn’t what he seemed and he left her life in pieces.

Now 32, Lou discovers that he is involved with teenager Chloe Meadows. Determined to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself, she returns home to confront him for the damage he’s caused.

But Mike is a predator of the worst kind, and as Lou tries to bring him to justice, it’s clear that she could once again become his prey…

The million copy Sunday Times bestseller returns with a gripping psychological thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat.

Extract:

Chloe scoots up next to Kirsteen on the bed, dips her hand into the bag her friend is holding and shoves a handful of crisps into her mouth. At the far end of the tastefully decorated black and white bedroom is a huge 40″ TV showing a romantic comedy Chloe has never seen before.

‘I heard your mum on the phone,’ Chloe says. ‘As I was coming out of the loo. You don’t think she was ringing my dad, do you?’

‘Why would she? She believes me.’

‘But she seemed a bit suspicious when I turned up at the door on my own.’

‘No she didn’t.’ Kirsteen gives her a dismissive look then shoves her hand into the crisp packet. ‘You’re just being paranoid.’

‘I dunno. She definitely gave me a funny look.’

Kirsteen laughs. ‘Para … para … paranoid,’ she sings the words in time with the chorus of Coldplay’s ‘Paradise’ as she whirls her forefinger in circles near her temple.

‘Para … para … paranoid.’ Chloe joins in, initially because she doesn’t want her friend to think she’s a headcase, but then the rhythm of the song seeps into her bones and she bounces up and down on the bed as she shouts the words. It’s great being at Kirsteen’s house. Her mum’s really cool and laid-back. Her dad too. She’s never heard Kirsteen complain about her parents, other than when they wouldn’t let her stay at a party until midnight. She even gets on well with her little sister Sophie. But it’s more than that, there’s a nice atmosphere at Kirsteen’s house. It feels relaxed, just like the people in it. An idea pricks at the edge of Chloe’s brain as she reaches for her can of Diet Coke on the bedside table and takes a sip. Maybe she could ask Kirsteen’s mum if she could live with them? Kirsteen’s room is big enough to fit a second bed in. She’d sleep on a blow-up mattress on the floor if she had to. They could do their homework together and hang out watching films and stuff at the weekend. She can’t imagine her own family objecting to the idea. They’d probably be glad to see the back of her.

About The Author:

C.L. Taylor is a Sunday Times bestselling author. Her psychological thrillers have sold over a million copies in the UK alone, been translated into over twenty languages, and optioned for television. C.L. Taylor lives in Bristol with her partner and son.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from the above extract do follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

I’m thrilled to be able to share an extract of The Tapestry Of War by Jane Mackenzie today.  Apologies to Ailsa for being late posting this, life is a little hectic with three children sometimes.

Tapestry Of War is published today in ebook and paperback on the 20th September 2018 and you can purchase or pre-order a copyhere.

Before I share the extract with you here is a little about the book.

Book Blurb:

From the deserts of North Africa, to the waters of Scotland, the Second World War touches the lives of two women from two very different worlds. In Alexandria, Fran finds her world turned upside down as Rommel’s forces advance on the idyllic shores of Egypt. The life of luxury and stability that she is used to is taken away as she finds herself having to deal with loss, heartache and political uncertainty. Meanwhile, in the Firth of Clyde, Catriona struggles between her quiet rural life and her dreams of nursing injured servicemen on the front lines. As the war rages on, the two women’s lives become intertwined – bringing love and friendship to both.

Extract:

This extract is from Chapter Two, Chapter One is currently available on the publisher’s website http://www.allisonandbusby.com/booksample/tapestry-of-war-chapter-sample.pdf

About The Author:

Jane MacKenzie has spent much of her adult life travelling the world, teaching English and French everywhere from the Gambia to Papua New Guinea to Bahrain, and recently working for two years at CERN in Geneva. She now splits her time between her self-built house in Collioure, France and the Highlands of Scotland, where she has made her family home.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from the extract I shared please follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

Book Blurb:

Poppy never thought she wanted to be a mother – and then her husband got her best friend pregnant.

Now everywhere she goes, mothers are reminding her of his betrayal . . .

So Poppy creates an innocent Facebook group to vent just a little about ‘smug mummies’.

Except those ‘other women’ are already heartily sick of being judged by non-mums and stay-at-home mums alike. Two can play at Poppy’s game.

Which is when the anger spills into the real world.

Cafés become battlegrounds, playgrounds become warzones and offices have never been so divided between the have children and have lives . . .

A rivalry that was once harmless fun is suddenly spiralling out of Poppy’s control.

She started this – but can she end it?

From the author of the eBook sensation The Fifth Letter comes another darkly comic, controversial and compulsive read that you’re going to want to talk about with everyone you know.

Those Other Women is available in ebook now for the bargain price of 99p and will be published in paperback on the 3rd May 2018.  You can purchase or pre-order a copy of both here.

My Review:

I loved Nicola’s first book, The Fifth Letter, so I was very excited to be offered the chance to read an early copy of the book.

Nicola is fantastic at writing stories about realistic situations that could actually happen.  As a mother myself I have heard mainly the mother’s side of the story so it was fascinating to go behind the scenes and hear the other side of the argument.  I think I now understand a little more about the frustrations women without children must feel and the prejudices they face on a daily basis.  I do hope however that things in my home town don’t errupt quite the way they do in the book.

Some of the situations described in the book are so spot on and are things that I have experienced in my time as a mum too.  For example I often try to hide from my kids in the toilet just to get a few minutes peace!  I found myself laughing out loud at some of the descriptions and situations in the book. Nicola has definitely observed or experienced some of these things as they are just too realistic!

I didn’t really warm to any of the woman in the book as the story meant it was quite hard to.  Out of all the characters I did have a bit of a soft spot for Poppy as I did feel sorry for her when everything starts going wrong and the safety net she has built for herself suddenly unravels.  She did seem quite bitchy and full of herself at times though which made it hard for me to like her completely.

For me this was a slow moving book but that was half of the fun of it as it allows the reader time to get to understand the situation and the women more so you are more involved in the story and more shocked about the events that happen.  The pace gradually picks up towards the end of the book and I was definitely intrigued until the last page.

This is Nicola Moriarty’s second book and the second one I have read.  I can’t wait to read more from her as her stories are always original and relatable ones.

Huge thanks to Sam Deacon from Michael St Joseph publishers for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

About The Author:

Eek I’m so excited to have an extract from Angela Marsons new book to share with you today.  If you haven’t read any of her fabulous books yet, do go check them out as they are brilliant.

Dying Truth is published on the 18th May 2018 but you can order it, for the bargain price of £1.99, here.

Before I share the extract with you here is a bit about the book.

Book Blurb:

How far would you go to protect your darkest secrets?

When teenager Sadie Winter jumps from the roof of her school, her death is ruled as suicide – a final devastating act from a troubled girl. But then the broken body of a young boy is discovered at the same school and it’s clear to Detective Kim Stone that these deaths are not tragic accidents.

As Kim and her team begin to unravel a dark web of secrets, one of the teachers could hold the key to the truth. Yet just as she is about to break her silence, she is found dead.

With more children’s lives at risk, Kim has to consider the unthinkable – whether a fellow pupil could be responsible for the murders. Investigating the psychology of children that kill brings the detective into contact with her former adversary, Dr Alex Thorne– the sociopath who has made it her life’s work to destroy Kim.

Desperate to catch the killer, Kim finds a link between the recent murders and an initiation prank that happened at the school decades earlier. But saving these innocent lives comes at a cost – and one of Kim’s own might pay the ultimate price.

The utterly addictive new crime thriller from the Number One bestselling author – you will be gripped until the final shocking twist.

Prologue Extract:

Saturday 7.52 p.m.

Kim knew that her left leg was broken.

She pulled herself along the path on her hands as the stone bit into her palms, shards of gravel embedding beneath her fingernails.

A cry escaped her lips as her ankle turned and pain shot around her body.

Sweat beads were forming on her forehead as the agony intensified.

Finally, she saw the light from the building as three familiar shapes hurtled out of the doorway.

All three of them headed towards the bell tower.

‘Nooo…’ she cried, as loudly as she could.

No one turned.

Don’t go up there, she willed silently, trying to pull herself towards them.

‘Stop,’ she shouted out as they entered the metal doorway at the base of the tower.

Kim tried to still the panic as they disappeared from view.

‘Damn it,’ she screamed with frustration, unable to reach them in time.

She gathered all her strength and pushed herself up to a standing position, trying to drag her broken leg behind her as though it didn’t exist.

Two steps forward and the pain radiated through her body like a tidal wave and brought her back down to the ground. She gagged as the nausea rose from her stomach and her head began to swim.

She shouted again but the figures had disappeared from view and were now in the belly of the tower, behind solid brick, mounting the stone steps to the top.

‘Please, someone help,’ she screamed, but there was no one to hear. She was a good eighty metres away from the school, and she had never felt so helpless in her life.

She glanced at her wrist and saw that it was three minutes to eight.

The bell was due to be rung bang on the hour.

The fear started in the pit of her stomach and grew like a cloud to fill her entire body.

She struggled forward another agonising step, dragging her useless leg behind her.

Torchlight illuminated the top of the tower.

Damn it, they were already there.

‘Stop,’ she cried again, praying that one of them would hear her even though she knew her voice wouldn’t carry that distance.

The shafts of light moved furtively around the tower balcony ninety feet up in the air.

She saw a fourth figure amongst the three that were familiar to her.

The watch on her wrist vibrated the top of the hour. The bell didn’t ring.

Please God, let them get down.

Her prayer was cut off as she heard a loud scream.

Two people were hanging from the bell rope, swinging back and forth, in and out of the torchlight that darted around the small space.

Kim squinted, trying to identify the two silhouettes, but they were too far away.

She tried to regulate her breathing in order to shout again, even though she knew no kind of warning would help them now.

Her worst fears had been realised.

‘Please, please…’ Kim whispered as she saw the bell rope swing back and forth once more.

One figure was snatched from the bell rope as the second continued to swing.

‘No,’ Kim screamed, trying to carry herself forward towards them.

The fear inside had turned ice cold, freezing her solid.

For a few seconds time stood still. The saliva in her mouth had gone leaving her unable to speak or shout.

Kim felt the ache that started in her heart when the remaining figure and the swinging bell rope disappeared from view.

Her ears suddenly filled with a blood-curdling, tortured scream.

But no one else was around.

The scream came from her.

About The Author:

Book Blurb:

A university student is found strangled to death in her bedroom, but when the embattled DI Simon Fenchurch is called in to investigate, the case strikes dangerously close to home.

On the surface, the victim was a popular, high-performing student. But as secret grudges against her emerge, so too does evidence that she was living a double life, working on explicit webcam sites for a seedy London ganglord. Everyone Fenchurch talks to knows a lot more than they’re willing to tell, and before long he’s making new enemies of his own—threatening to push him and his family past breaking point.

With too many suspects and not enough facts, Fenchurch knows his new superiors are just waiting for him to fail—they want him off the case, and off the force for good. His family is in more danger than ever before. So how deep is he willing to dig in order to unearth the truth?

In For The Kill is published on the 19th April 2018 in ebook and hardback.  You can pre-order your copy here.

My Review:

I’m on a roll for reading some fantastic books, and In For The Kill was no exception.  It literally gripped me from the start with the unusual and shocking subject.  As a parent it is the stuff of my worse nightmares and it made me turn the pages a little quicker as I was desperate to find out what was going to happen.  Even when the story moves on to another story line it was always in the back of my mind as I hoped to find out more and wondering how it was going to link into the main story.

My favourite character was DI  Fenchurch.  Although he comes across as being a rather grizzled and grumpy guy, he definitely has a softer side which was touching to see.  The respect and concern that his colleagues show him adds to the good guy persona.  As mentioned above I really felt for him in regards to the story line regarding his daughter.  For me this bit was really well written as I felt I went on a real journey with him and could feel all of his fears and frustrations as if it was happening to me.  I think it shows amazing writing to make a reader feel this way.

The pace in the book is very fast and the story moves quite quickly making the book incredibly hard to put down.  This was a book that had me reading long into the night or sitting up after a feed longer than I needed trying to fit a few more pages in.  The thing that helps add to the addictiveness of this book is that the author interweaves the murder story with the characters personal stories which makes the reader more interested in the story and means you care more what happens to the people.

This is the fourth book in the series but the first I have read and I will definitely be going back and reading the books I have missed.  I didn’t feel like I missed much coming into the series so late, though it might have been good to learn more about their backstory.

Huge thank you to Anne Cater for inviting me onto the blog tour and to Emma Finnigan and Thomas & Mercer for my copy of this fabulous book!

About The Author:

Ed James writes crime-fiction novels. In for the Kill is the fourth novel in his latest series, set on the gritty streets of East London and featuring DI Simon Fenchurch. His Scott Cullen series features a young Edinburgh detective constable investigating crimes from the bottom rung of the career ladder he’s desperate to climb. Set four hundred miles south on the streets of East London, his DI Simon Fenchurch series features a detective with little to lose. Formerly an IT manager, Ed began writing on planes, trains and automobiles to fill his weekly commute to London. He now writes full-time and lives in the Scottish Borders, with his girlfriend and a menagerie of rescued animals.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review please follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

I’m hugely excited to introduce my lovely friend Kirsty as a guest reviewer on my blog.  Kirsty and I met at toddler group and became friends through a mutual love of books.  Our kids are friends so we regularly meet up and natter about books over a cuppa and between breaking up squabbles. She is a brilliant addition to Over The Rainbow Book Blog as she reads different books to myself so between us we can help spread more book love.

Her favourite genres are fantasy and  mystery and thrillers.  She’s very happy to do blog tours so do feel free to approach her! Follow Kirsty on Twitter @purplekizz

Before I share Kirsty’s first review for Over The Rainbow Book Blog, here is a little bit about the book.

Book Blurb:

From the daring and critically acclaimed master of historical fiction Conn Iggulden, DARIEN is the first book of Empire of Salt, an epic new fantasy series of spellbinding imagination . . .

TWELVE FAMILIES. ONE THRONE.

The city of Darien stands at the weary end of a golden age. Twelve families keep order with soldiers and artefacts, spies and memories, clinging to a peace that shifts and crumbles. The people of the city endure what they cannot change.

Here, amongst old feuds, a plot is hatched to kill a king. It will summon strangers to the city – Elias Post, a hunter, Tellius, an old swordsman banished from his home, Arthur, a boy who cannot speak, Daw Threefold, a chancer and gambler, Vic Deeds, who feels no guilt – and Nancy, a girl whose talent might be the undoing of them all.

As the sun sets, their arrival inside the walls will spark a series of explosive events. Before the sun returns, six destinies will have been made – and lost – in Darien.

Welcome to the Empire of Salt, where sword and sorcery are at their finest . . . 

Darien is available to buy in ebook and hardback now.  It will be published in paperback on the 12th July 2018.  You can buy or pre-order your copy here.

Kirsty’s Review:

Darien is the center of the crumbling Empire of Salt. Ruled by a King who is the puppet of the twelve families, the people of Darien are restless and forces are converging against the twelve. The first in what promises to be an epic fantasy series. I have never read any of Conn Iggulden’s previous books, I don’t tend to pick up historical novels so I was intrigued to see how this book would unfold.

I initially found it quite hard to get into – the first part of the book introduces us to several main players, the narrative switches between them, occasional during a chapter so I did struggle to remember where I was and what was going on. However, Iggulden’s writing style is so engaging that I kept with it and I am so glad that I did.

I found all the characters of the book incredibly engaging, each having their own reasons for wanting a change within the walls of the city. Each has a gift or a knack which makes them a little bit more than ‘ordinary’. Most characters had something likeable about them, which made you want them to succeed. I was particularly drawn to Nancy, a young woman trying to find her way in a city of thousands.

The main section of the book all takes place within the walls of Darien itself, I found these scenes very engaging and by the end of the book I found myself fully immersed in the sights, sounds and even smells of the city. I would have liked a little more world building as I ended the book feeling I knew very little about the empire itself, but perhaps this will come in later books. I am certainly looking forward to getting my hands on the next one.

About The Author:

Born in London, Conn Iggulden read English at London University and worked as a teacher for seven years before becoming a full-time writer. Married with three children, he lives in Hertfordshire. Since publication of ‘The Gates of Rome’, Conn has written a further thirteen books including the wildly successful ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’.

In 2017, Conn Iggulden released the first book in his first fiction fantasy series, Darien: Empire of Salt.^[10] This series is being published under the pen name C.F. Iggulden^[11] to avoid confusion with Iggulden’s historical fiction novels.

Book Blurb:

Meet Rosemary, 86, and Kate, 26: dreamers, campaigners, outdoor swimmers…

Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life, but everything she knows is changing. Only the local lido, where she swims every day, remains a constant reminder of the past and her beloved husband George.

Kate has just moved and feels adrift in a city that is too big for her. She’s on the bottom rung of her career as a local journalist, and is determined to make something of it.

So when the lido is threatened with closure, Kate knows this story could be her chance to shine. But for Rosemary, it could be the end of everything. Together they are determined to make a stand, and to prove that the pool is more than just a place to swim – it is the heart of the community.

The Lido is an uplifting novel about the importance of friendship, the value of community, and how
ordinary people can protect the things they love.

The Lido will be available to buy in ebook and hardback on the 19th April 2018.  You can pre-order your copy here.

My Review:

I loved this book.  It’s been a while since I’ve read such an all round fantastic story that left such an impression on me.  I love reading a book that keeps you thinking about it for days to come.

The sense of community the author has created in the book is brilliantly done.  I loved learning about all the different people who use the lido and what effect it has on them.  The characters are so varied and each one has a different reason for using the Lido which was fascinating to read about.

The two main characters Rosemary and Kate are at opposite ends of their life and would probably not even be friends if it wasn’t for their shared interest in the Lido.  I loved how the lido made them both feel and how fighting to save it made them both do things that they hadn’t tried in a long time.  It was great to read about how the lido brought them and all the other characters together and helped Kate especially to fit in and make new friends.

Interspersed with the fight to save the lido is a beautiful love story of how Rosemary met, fell in love and lived with her husband George.  It is a wonderful story and brought joy to my heart and a tear to my eye in equal measure.  The lido, and the people who use it, seem to have played a part in each part of their journey which was so lovely to read about.

This is Libby Pages debut and I can’t wait to read her next one! If you like uplifting and inspiring reads with a bit of history and a love story you will love this book!

Huge thanks to Orion for my copy of this book via netgalley. A definite must read that I urge everyone to read!

About The Author:

Libby Page wrote The Lido while working in marketing and moonlighting as a writer. The Lido has sold in over twenty territories around the world and film rights have been sold to Catalyst Global Media. After writing, Libby’s second passion is outdoor swimming. Libby lives in London where she enjoys finding new swimming spots and pockets of community within the city.

I’m very excited to be kicking off the blog tour for The Silent Women by Terry Lynn Thomas.  I thought this book was fabulous and I gave it five stars!

The Silent Women is available to buy on ebook now for the bargain price of £1.99! You can purchase your copy here.

Book Blurb:

Would you sell your secrets?

Catherine Carlisle is trapped in a loveless marriage and the threat of World War Two is looming. She sees no way out… that is until a trusted friend asks her to switch her husband’s papers in a desperate bid to confuse the Germans.

Soon Catherine finds herself caught up in a deadly mixture of espionage and murder. Someone is selling secrets to the other side, and the evidence seems to point right at her.

Can she clear her name before it’s too late?

My Review:

I really enjoyed this fascinating historical thriller. I Iove historical fiction especially when it is set around WW2 and features spies or the resistance.  It always helps add to the tension and atmosphere as you realise that some people might have actually done the things described in the book.  I always wonder if I would have had the courage to stand up to Hitler and try and make a difference.

This story drew me in from the very intriguing prologue regarding a tense situation.  I immediately wanted to read more to discover what happens to the characters involved and if they survived.

My favourite character was Catherine.  I really admired her strength, courage and determination.  It would have been very easy for her to toe the line and do as society and her family expected but the fact she doesn’t really shows her character.  It was quite startling reading about what rights a woman had at this time, which wasn’t actually that long ago, and how much control men had.  Cat really pushes against this and refuses to conform.  Her arguments with her sister in law were brilliant and helped add to some comic moments in the book.

The gradual unraveling of the mystery of what happened and who the spy was is brilliantly done and had me guessing until the end.  The pace of the book is perfect being neither too fast or slow and ensured that the book was quite hard to put down.

This is the first book by Terry Lynn Thomas that I have read and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.

Thank you to HQ Digital for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

If you like thrilling historical fiction with some fabulous female characters you’ll love this book!

About The Author:

If you liked the sound of this book from my review please follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

I’m on the blog tour today for Seas Of Snow by Kerensa Jennings.  This is a book I have heard a lot about and I can’t wait to read it.

Seas Of Snow was published in paperback on the 5th April 2018.  You can purchase a copy here.

I have a character spotlight on Uncle Joe to share with you, but first here is a little bit about the book.

Book Blurb:

In 1950s England, six-year-old Gracie Scott lives with her Mam and next door to her best friend Billy; she has never known her Da. When her Uncle Joe moves in, his physical abuse of Gracie’s mother starts almost immediately. But when his attentions wander to Gracie, an even more sinister pattern of behavior begins.

As Gracie grows older she finds solace and liberation in books, poetry, and her enduring friendship with Billy, with whom she escapes into the poetic fantasy worlds they create. But will fantasy be enough to save Gracie? Just how far will Uncle Joe’s psychopathic behavior go?

The story weaves between these events and the visits Billy pays many years later to an old friend, confused and dying in a hospice. It is here that he is forced to revisit the events of the past.

Character Spotlight:

Who is your character?

The character I am choosing to put in the spotlight today is Uncle Joe.

The inspiration for his/her character?

Although SEAS OF SNOW is set through the Second World War and in post-War fifties England, the story was inspired by a contemporary crime case.
I led the BBC News coverage of the investigation into a school caretaker who had murdered two little girls in Soham. I worked closely with Cambridgeshire Constabulary during the investigation as they gathered evidence – and I saw first-hand the brutality of the perpetrator’s crimes. I also got an extraordinary insight into the mind and motives of a psychopath.

The creation of your character?

Although my story is very different in many ways to the case I covered, the emotions it inspired in me is something I channelled closely in the creation of Uncle Joe. Dealing with the evidence associated with the case triggered in me everything from deep sadness to revulsion; from horror to disgust; from abject heartbreak to despair. I wrote the book partly as a means of catharsis. I wanted to explore whether evil is born or made.

Because SEAS OF SNOW uses perspective shift throughout the book, there are many passages written from Uncle Joe’s perspective. I found it an eviscerating and upsetting experience to write those passages. I had to use my imagination to synthesise what I had learned through my psychology studies, researching the behaviours and mindsets of psychopaths, and what I knew myself from the particular case that originally inspired SEAS OF SNOW. I would often break away afterwards, and find myself crying. But it was important I pushed myself to create something authentic and believable. I was making a monster, and I needed my readers to believe he was real.

Can you tell us a little about your character?

The story of SEAS OF SNOW is a sort of fairy tale with archetypes of good versus evil. The good tends to manifest as sweet, generous, kind. As for the evil…. let’s just say Uncle Joe is a very bad man. Through the book we learn about some of the aspects of his childhood and background that have shaped him. And we gradually discover more about the depravity of which he is capable, and the way he deludes himself. Some of his actions are unconscionable.

Does he/she have any similarities with anyone ‘real’?

What is fascinating when you study the psychology of psychopaths is you realise there are so many traits they have that you might recognise in people around you. The ability to lie, and manipulate. Hide in plain sight, like the school caretaker Ian Huntley did when he was interviewed by the media at the time of the disappearance of the two little girls in Soham.

Psychopaths are unable to experience empathy, but they can be very good at creating the illusion of empathy.

If so .. tell us more!

The truth is there are lots of people who are psychopaths – some of them are extremely high functioning, talented individuals. Some are even in high powered positions across society. What interests me is that not everyone who is a psychopath goes on to commit monstrous acts. I wrote SEAS OF SNOW partly to explore that dichotomy.

What do you like most about your character?

I deliberately made Uncle Joe a devastatingly attractive man with a beautiful body, handsome face and gorgeous voice. I wanted to create that sense of us not quite being able to believe our own eyes. It is very easy to apply fairy tale logic to real life… beauty equals goodness.

The brutal reality is that evil comes in all sorts of forms… it can shape-shift to suit its own intent. Uncle Joe has exquisite green eyes you could lose yourself in, and a physical attractiveness people find hard not to notice.
It was important to me to bring that dimension to life to help expose how our perceptions can be deceived; and to give the story a fairy tale quality where happy-ever-afters feel possible… but darkness often prevails.

What do you dislike about your protagonist’s character?

Gosh… where to start… the way his mind works… the pleasure he gains from causing pain… the way he strikes fear into people… the way he is able to convince himself and delude himself about certain things…

Would you and your character be friends ‘in real life’?

Never.

What’s Next?

In my next novel, there is another antagonist. The book is called EDGE IF RAIN and it is inspired by another case I worked on when I was a journalist and TV producer….. watch this space…

About The Author:

Kerensa Jennings is a storyteller, strategist, writer, producer and professor.

Kerensa’s TV work took her all over the world, covering everything from geo-politics to palaeontology, and her time as Programme Editor of Breakfast with Frost coincided with the life-changing events of 9/11.

The knowledge and experience she gained in psychology by qualifying and practising as an Executive Coach has only deepened her fascination with exploring the interplay between nature and nurture and with investigating whether evil is born or made – the question at the heart of Seas of Snow. As a scholar at Oxford, her lifelong passion for poetry took flight.

Kerensa lives in West London and over the last few years has developed a career in digital enterprise.

Follow The Blog Tour:

If you liked the sound of Seas Of Snow from this Character spotlight, do follow the blog tour and find out what these other fabulous bloggers are saying.

Book Blurb:

1923
Maria Vittoria is embroidering a sheet for her dowry trunk.

Her father has gone to find her a husband. He’s taken his mule, a photograph and a pack of food: home-made sopressa sausage, cold polenta, a little flask of wine – no need to take water – the world is full of water.

There are no eligible men in this valley or the next one, and her father will not let her marry just anyone, and now, despite Maria’s years, she is still healthy. Her betrothed will see all that. He’ll be looking for a woman who can do the work.

Maria can do the work. Everyone in the contrà says that.

And the Lord knows Maria will need to be able to work. Fascism blooms as crops ripen, the state craves babies just as the babies cry for food. Maria faces a stony path, but one she will surely climb to the summit.

In this sumptuous and elegant novel you will taste the bigoli co l’arna, touch the mulberry leaves cut finer than organdie, and feel the strain of one woman attempting to keep her family safe in the most dangerous of times.

The Madonna Of The Mountain was published by Faber & Faber on the 27th March in ebook and hardback.  You can purchase your copy here.

My Review:

The Madonna Of The Mountains is a saga like story following Maria and her family from 1923 through to after the second world war.  It is a beautifully told story about love in later life, for that time anyway.  I really felt for Maria who fears she will be ‘left on the shelf’ at 25! It was very poignant to read about her weighing up her good points, trying to convince herself that she has a lot to give her future husband.  Her helplessness in this situation is heartbreaking, particularly as she has no say in what happens.

Maria was my favourite character and I loved reading about the journey she goes through throughout the novel.  She has to grow up quickly in a short amount of time and her ability to adapt and make do was very admirable.  Her strength and determination to make her marriage work and keep her family safe was beautiful to read about and I admired her courage.

The book is set in an interesting period of Italian history which was fascinating to read about.  I love learning about new periods of history and as I didn’t know much about this period I found it very interesting.  The affect of the rise of fascism in everyday life and the war years were the most fascinating part of the book for me.  I’ve always been amazed by how quickly it took off in Italy and how easily people followed it.  The Mulberry farming and the keeping of silkworms was great to read about too as again I hadn’t read much about it before.

As you might expect in a book set in Italy, food is mentioned and I enjoyed reading the sometimes mouth watering descriptions.  The author has included a few recipes in the back of the book for some of the food mentioned and I will definitely be trying some of them in the near future.

The book has a bit of a slow start as there isn’t a lot of action and a lot about Maria’s thoughts or musings.  The author’s writing style is a little different to what I’m used to and took me a little bit to get used to but it soon gets interesting so I would urge everyone to continue as it does pick up.

If you like family sagas or Italian history you will enjoy this book.  Thank you to Joanna Lee and Faber and Faber publishers for my copy of this book and for inviting me onto the blog tour.

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