#BlogTour: THE OLD YOU by Louise Voss @LouiseVoss1 @OrendaBooks @annecater

Publication: 15th May 2018 by Orenda Books

Nail-bitingly modern domestic noir

A tense, Hitchcockian psychological thriller

Louise Voss returns with her darkest, most chilling, novel yet…

Lynn Naismith gave up the job she loved when she married Ed, the love of her life, but it was worth it for the happy years they enjoyed together. Now, ten years on, Ed has been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, and things start to happen; things more sinister than missing keys and lost words.

As some memories are forgotten, others, long buried, begin to surface… and Lynn’s perfect world begins to crumble.

But is it Ed’s mind playing tricks, or hers…?

I started this novel not quite sure what to expect, but from a few earlier reviews I read I knew I was going to be blown away, and blown away I was. THE OLD YOU is domestic noir with capital letters, full of suspense, well-developed characters, and jaw-dropping moments.

It starts slow, with the protagonist, Lynn Naismith, finding out that her husband Ed suffers from an early form of dementia on the same day she finds a new job. The way the author describes Lynn’s feelings over her husband’s illness, her insecurities and struggles feel realistic, authentic, and well-researched as Lynn comes to term with the disease and she prepares for a future that won’t be as rosy as she imagined. And when things start to take a darker turn, I found myself completely dragged into Lynn’s claustrophobic world and the mysterious things that start to happen around her.

The plot is clever and completely unpredictable because nothing is what it seems. Each character has their own secrets and, like Lynn, I found myself not knowing what was real anymore and which character to trust and believe. There are so many twists that at some point I lost count. Every few pages there is something that surprises you, that completely shocks you because you couldn’t see it coming. There are so many secrets, lies, and truths, and each one is revealed slowly, a bit at the time, so the tension is always high. Reading this novel was a rollercoaster and I got to the end completely out of breath.

THE OLD YOU is my first Louise Voss’s novel and I am sorry I didn’t discover earlier this author and her captivating writing, her dark and vivid characters, and her carefully-plotted  stories. I have been missing out but I plan to catch up. THE OLD YOU is haunting, intense, and riveting, and I’d like to thank Orenda Books and Anne Cater for providing me with a copy of the book and for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

Louise Voss has been writing for the past eighteen years, with many twists and turns in her career. She started her publishing life with four novels for Transworld/Black Swan, the first of which, To Be Someone, was published in 2001 with its own CD soundtrack. This was followed by three more contemporary women’s fiction novels, Are You My Mother? Lifesaver, and Games People Play, until she switched to publishing thrillers with Mark Edwards.

She and Mark were the first British indie authors to reach No.1 on the Amazon charts with Catch Your Death, where they stayed for the month of June 2011, with their novel Killing Cupid also at No. 2. This led to a four-book deal with Harper Collins; then two books in the DI Lennon series, From the Cradle and The Blissfully Dead (Thomas & Mercer).

Her first solo thriller was The Venus Trap in 2015 and her second, a twisty tale of domestic noir, is out in May 2018: The Old You, published by @OrendaBooks.

Louise lives in southwest London and can be reached at @LouiseVoss1 on Twitter or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LouiseVossAuthor.