Publication: 6th February 2020 – HQ
JOANNE HAYNES HAS A SECRET.
THAT IS NOT HER REAL NAME.
And there’s more. Her flat isn’t hers. Her cats aren’t hers. Even her hair isn’t really hers.
Nor is she any of the other women she pretends to be. Not the bestselling romance novelist who gets her morning snack from the doughnut van on the seafront. Nor the pregnant woman in the dental surgery. Nor the chemo patient in the supermarket for whom the cashier feels ever so sorry. They’re all just alibis.
In fact, the only thing that’s real about Joanne is that nobody can know who she really is.
But someone has got too close. It looks like her alibis have begun to run out….
Amazon.co.uk: https://amzn.to/30SIsuT
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Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for the brand new captivating novel by CJ Skuse, The Alibi Girl.
The story opens with a woman, Mary, who is at the hairdresser with her five-week-old daughter Emily. She tells her hairdresser about her job as a GP, her four other children, and her handsome husband. Only, her name is not Mary, but Joanne, she isn’t married, she doesn’t have four other children, and she isn’t a doctor. She has many identities and she is hiding. Who is really Joanne? And what or who is she hiding from? Is she really in danger or is she simply paranoid?
I love CJ Skuse humour and darkness and, after reading Sweetpea and In Bloom, I was looking forward to reading more from this author. Once again, the protagonist of her novel is a young woman who is not easy to like, at least at the beginning of the story. Joanne, or whoever she is, is scared, paranoid, and childish. She lies non-stop, and her obsessions border to psychopathic. However, the more I read, the more I learned about her life and her childhood, the more I started to feel sympathy for her.
The plot is dark and suspenseful, but it is also heart-breaking and compelling. The author knows how to hold the interest of the reader, with multi-layered characters, different narratives and timelines, twists and turns that make you hold your breath, and a unique plot that made it hard to put the book down.
Thank you so much to Joe, Jess, and HQ for providing me with a copy of this fantastic novel.
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Book After Book 