Book After Book

Publication: 22nd October 2018

A hidden masterpiece.A secret buried for 500 years.And one woman determined to uncover the truth.

When London tour guide Helen Oddfellow meets a historian on the trail of a lost manuscript, she’s intrigued by the mystery – and the man. But the pair are not the only ones desperate to find the missing final play by sixteenth century English playwright Christopher Marlowe. What starts as a literary puzzle quickly becomes a quest with deadly consequences.When Helen realises the play hides an explosive religious secret, she begins to understand how much is at stake. Relying on her quick wits, she battles far-right thugs, eccentric aristocrats and an ancient religious foundation, each with their own motives for getting their hands on the manuscript. She discovers there is a price to pay for secret knowledge, but how high is too high?

Unlawful Things was shortlisted for the Virago/The Pool New Crime Writer Award. If you love a bit of historical sleuthing and a healthy dose of fast-paced action, you’ll enjoy this intriguing debut thriller from Anna Sayburn Lane. Discover Unlawful Things today!

 

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour of UNLAWFUL THINGS, the suspenseful, atmospheric, and gripping new novel by Anna Sayburn Lane. I’d like to thank Anne Cater for inviting me to take part and for providing me with a copy of the novel.

I do love a good thriller mixed with a centuries-old mystery and bookish and smart characters and that’s what Anna Sayburn Lane’s novel delivers. Meet Helen Oddfellow, a young woman who is doing her PhD on Christopher Marlowe while working as a guide on historical tours around London. Meet Richard Watson, a renowned historian researching the history of a family who once had a prestigious position at the court of Elizabeth I. And meet Nick Wilson, a young reporter writing about the violence caused by racism following the opening of a new mosque. How are these three people connected? How do their paths cross? It revolves all around the Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, his tragic death, and a possible lost play.

The author really did her research into Elizabethan history and literature, the writing of Christopher Marlowe, religious beliefs, secret societies, conspiracies, and court alliances of the time. Featuring historical figures like Walter Raleigh, Thomas Becket (the Archbishop of Canterbury), and, of course, Christopher Marlowe, I found it all very fascinating and it really kept me glued to the pages, especially the mystery behind Christopher Marlowe’s death.

Religion and racism are at the center of the novel and there is murder, kidnapping, and torture with a bit of romanticism that fits perfectly in the plot. If you love a well-written and thrilling mystery with a dark atmosphere, if you’d like to travel back in time to the sixteenth century in the English court, then UNLAWFUL THING is a must-read!

Anna Sayburn Lane is a novelist, short story writer and storyteller, inspired by the history and contemporary life of London. Unlawful Things is her first novel.
She has published award-winning short stories in a number of magazines, including Mslexia, Scribble and One Eye Grey.
Her Mslexia award-winning story Conservation was described by judge and Booker-longlisted author Alison MacLeod as “a powerful and profound contemporary piece in which one man’s story stands for an entire nation’s… it’s a punch to the heart, a story that will haunt and touch its readers deeply”.
She has told stories at London club The Story Party and One Eye Grey’s Halloween event, Moon Over the Lido.

Twitter: @BloomsburyBlue

 Website: http://www.annasayburnlane.com/

Author Page on Facebook

Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unlawful-Things-Anna-Sayburn-Lane/dp/191642080X/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1549467597&sr=1-1&keywords=unlawful+things

Publication: 21st February 2019 – HQ

One little lie just became deadly…

Perfect mother. Perfect wife. Jane Goodwin has spent years building her picture-perfect life in the quiet town of Ashdon.

So when the girl next door, sixteen-year-old Clare Edwards, is found murdered, Jane knows she must first protect her family.

Every marriage has a few white lies and hers is no exception. Jane’s worked hard to cover up her dark secret from all those years ago – and she’ll do anything to keep it hidden…

 

 

After a fantastic debut novel, Phoebe Morgan is back with another twisty story that kept me captivated from the first to the last page. She holds the attention of the readers thanks to the different points of views, the gripping and dark plot, and the multi-layered and realistic characters that keep the tension always high.

Welcome to Ashdon where mothers gossip at the school gate, husbands mow the garden, and nothing bad ever happens… until 16-year-old Clare Edwards is found murdered. But who would kill a young and innocent girl? We found out through the narrative of the three protagonists.

Clare is the typical teenager, popular at school, beautiful, with high grades, and always on her cell phone. But Clare is also hiding a few secrets, a family secret that makes her anxious and scared and that makes difficult her relationship with her mother and her stepfather, and she is also exchanging texts with a mysterious man. So what did get her killed? Clare’s point of view was emotional and suspenseful at the same time. Emotional because you read about this young girl who, despite a difficult situation at home, is happy and excited for something that it’s about to happen, and yet you know that it’s going to end badly, that she will be murdered which adds tension to her story.

On the outside, Jane Goodwin has a perfect life. Three beautiful children, a husband who is the local GP, handsome, charming, all the women in town in love with him and jealous of Jane. Jane likes to show off her family and their wealth, being the perfect wife, the perfect mother, no matter what happens behind closed doors. She lives next door to Clare and her family and as the police investigate and journalists camp outside her house, Jane knows that she has to do everything she can to protect her perfect life. Jane’s character was the most difficult to figure out. She appears cold and distant while at the same time being a loving mother and wife and you don’t know what to make of her until the final shocking revelation.

DS Madeline Shaw arrived at Ashdon two years ago. We don’t know much about her personal life, but she is good at her job and she is determined to seek justice for Clare and, while her boss wants to close the case quickly, she tries to figure out how much of the local gossip is true and what Clare’s family is hiding.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is a riveting, thrilling, and well-written novel about how gossip and lies can be destructive, about the lenght people will go to protect their secrets and it kept me completely engrossed and I’d like to thank Lucy Richardson and HQ for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

 

Publication: 24th January 2019 (eBook), 4th April 2019 – Orion

BEFORE YOU READ THIS BOOK
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THREE THINGS:

1. The police are looking to charge me with murder.
2. No one knows who I am. Or how I did it.
3. If you think you’ve found me. I’m coming for you next.

After you’ve read this book, you’ll know: the truth is far more twisted…

 

 

Steve Cavanagh is the author of the captivating and twisty series featuring the brilliant lawyer Eddie Flynn, which I absolutely love. Now he has a new stand-alone coming out (although there is a small funny mention of Eddie Flynn), and once again he proved that he is a great storyteller who knows how to create a plot so shocking and gripping that it literally kept me on the edge of my seat.

Never title was more fitting for a story. There is twist after twist that completely take you by surprise, that make you question everything you’ve read so far, that make it impossible for you to put the book down because you absolutely need to know what happens next.

Who is J. T. Lebeau? He is an author who sold millions and millions of copies. Everyone knows his name and has read at least one of his books that attract readers for its many twists. But no one, not even his editor, has ever met him or knows his true identity.

Paul and Maria Cooper have been married for two years, but he is keeping secrets and she is unhappy and tired of his continuous absence and lies. When Maria finds out the truth about her husband, she sets in motion a series of events that quickly spiral out of control.

I won’t tell you more about the story, I won’t tell you how Maria and Paul are linked to a mysterious best-seller author, what I will tell you is that reading TWISTED was quite a ride. There are lies, deceit, secret identities, and much more. The characters are insane, dark, and multi-layered, and you never know who to trust. Nothing is predictable and when you think you have reached the most shocking revelation you then find out that there are more astonishing surprises waiting for you.

TWISTED is an excellent, superb, and jaw-dropping thriller from an author that continues to take me by surprise and I’d like to thank Orion for providing me with a proof of the novel.

 

 

 

Publication: 21st February 2019 – Orion

Audrey’s family has fallen apart. Her two grown-up daughters, Jess and Lily, are estranged, and her two teenage granddaughters have never been allowed to meet. A secret that echoes back thirty years has splintered the family in two, but is also the one thing keeping them connected.

As tensions reach breaking point, the irrevocable choice that one of them made all those years ago is about to surface. After years of secrets and silence, how can one broken family find their way back to each other?

 

 

What a beautiful and emotional read! This novel captured my heart with its heart-breaking plot and its engaging characters and I know I will be thinking about it for a long time.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is the story of two sisters and their mother. Lily and Jess haven’t spoken to each other for almost thirty years. They have missed many Christmases, many Sunday lunches, Lily’s wedding, and the births of both their daughters, all for something that happened when they were little. But what happened that made Jess hate Lily so much that she can’t even bear being in the same room as her? That’s what their mother Audrey wants to find out. Audrey knows that what happened twenty-eight years earlier changed their lives forever, but she doesn’t know what caused in Jess so much anger and hate and she wants to resolve it before it’s too late.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is a story of family, love, grief, loss, and friendship. It will make you laugh, but it will also make you cry, a lot (keep tissue close by!). Through different timelines, the author takes us on a wonderful and poignant journey between the past and the present that slowly reveals a sad past and a shocking revelation at the end that I could barely read because I had tears in my eyes.

The author created some well-crafted, realistic, and likable characters which I loved, which made me shed tears, and which sometimes made me angry (especially Jess). My favourite characters were Phoebe and Mia, Lily and Jess’s sixteen-year-old daughters, who I found very mature and smart for their age.

IF ONLY I COULD TELL YOU is a touching, beautiful, and engrossing novel that it’s impossible not to love and I’d like to thank Tracy for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and Orion for providing me with a copy of the book.

Hannah Beckerman studied English at King’s College, London and for a Master’s degree at Queen Mary and Westfield, London. She spent twelve years working in television, first as a Producer for the BBC and subsequently as a Commissioning Editor for Arts and Documentaries at Channel 4 and the Discovery Channel USA. She lived in Bangladesh for two years, working for the BBC World Service Trust.

Hannah is now a full-time author and journalist. She is a book critic and features writer for the Observer, the FT Weekend Magazine and the Sunday Express and a regular chair at literary festivals and events. She has been a judge for numerous book prizes including the Costa Book Awards. If Only I Could Tell You is Hannah’s second novel. She lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Publication: 4th March 2019 (eBook); 4th April 2019 (paperback) – HarperFiction

A murder that shocks a city… 
Shots ring out on one of Savannah’s most famous streets. A beautiful law student lies dead.
  
A case full of secrets and lies…
Three men close to the victim are questioned. All of them claim to love her. All of them say they are innocent of her murder.
 
An investigation that could prove deadly…
As crime reporter Harper McClain unravels a tangled story of obsession and jealousy, the killer focuses on her. He’s already killed one woman. Will he kill another?

 

At the end of 2017, I randomly happened on The Echo Killing on Netgalley and, after reading the blurb which I found really intriguing, I requested it. Then I read it and became obsessed with the novel and since then I have been waiting for its sequel, A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE, which I read in one day and which left me excited and impatient to read the next one.

It’s set in Savannah, Georgia, where the summers are hot and dry and where there are enough crimes to keep our protagonist busy. Who is the protagonist? Meet Harper McClain, a young reporter who covers the crime beat which means that she usually works at night and sleeps during the day (although, I have to say she doesn’t do much sleep during the day). When she was twelve years old, Harper’s mother was killed and she was the one who found the body, but the killer was never found. Now, someone is clearly after her, breaking into her house and leaving notes into her car, but she also has other things that keep her quite busy. First, there is her job. Naomi, a young woman who worked in the same bar with her friend Bonnie, has been killed.  The police suspect her boyfriend, but Harper has her own theories and she becomes quite involved in the case. Also, the Savannah Police, who she once considered her family, is now shutting her out following the events in The Echo Killing, making it very difficult for her to do her job.

Now, let’s talk about her love life. In The Echo Killing, Harper had a brief but intense fling with Luke, a detective, but things didn’t end well. However, a year later it seems that it’s not over between the two of them and I have to say I am becoming quite invested in their love story so I am really looking forward to see what happens in the next book.

I really like the character of Harper, a strong-willed, independent, and clever young woman. Her life gets more and more complicated, both personally and professionally, and she is an excellent journalist who doesn’t stop until she finds out the truth, even if that means that often she finds herself in danger and the target of a killer.

A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE is fast-paced, suspenseful, and intriguing. The author knows how to captivate the attention of the reader with a clear and simple prose, beautiful descriptions of Savannah, engaging characters, and a riveting and gripping plot. If you are looking for something addictive and thrilling, then I highly recommend A BEAUTIFUL CORPSE (and The Echo Killing), while I will be waiting for book number 3!

Publication: 21st February 2019 – Michael Joseph

Then . . .

One night, Annie went missing. Disappeared from her own bed. There were searches, appeals. Everyone thought the worst. And then, miraculously, after forty-eight hours, she came back. But she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what had happened to her.

Something happened to my sister. I can’t explain what. I just know that when she came back, she wasn’t the same. She wasn’t my Annie.

I didn’t want to admit, even to myself, that sometimes I was scared to death of my own little sister.

Now. . .

The email arrived in my inbox two months ago. I almost deleted it straight away, but then I clicked OPEN:

I know what happened to your sister. It’s happening again . . .

C. J. Tudor is a master storyteller. Her debut novel, The Chalk Man, kept me completely captivated and now she is back with an immersive, sinister, and twisty new novel.

In THE TAKING OF ANNIE THORNE, we follow the protagonist, Joe Thorne as he goes back to his hometown, Arnhill, where he’s found a job as a teacher in the local school. But why he is moving back to the place he had promised himself he was never going back to? What has that to do with her sister’s disappearance twenty-five years earlier? Or with the homicide-suicide with which the book opens? We slowly find out as Joe meets old and new friends and revisits his memories of his childhood.

First let’s talk about the protagonist. I loved the character of Joe Thorne. Running away from a troubled present, he decides it’s time to confront the past and goes back to the place that many people can’t wait to leave. His sarcasm and wit made me laugh and got him into trouble, but it’s clear that he is hiding something.

“Arnhill is a grim little village where a lot of bad things have happened. Jinxed. Cursed.”

Now let’s talk about the setting. Arnhill is a small village in Nottinghamshire. A former mining town, Arnhill is a character itself. Untouched by progress, grey, and in decaying, Arnhill is the perfect setting for this chilling and dark novel. Everything is still the same in the village and the villagers don’t welcome back Joe with open arms. Also, there is the house that Joe Thorne rents during his stay. It was formerly occupied by a mother who first killed her young son and then herself and strange things happen in there giving the house a creeping, threatening, don’t-open-that-door feeling.

The story is suspenseful, unpredictable, and riveting with a touch of supernatural and horror (the one-eyed doll Abbie Eyes really gave me the creeps). Carefully plotted and full of twists, THE TAKING OF ANNIE THORNE is a novel that will leave you holding your breath the entire time and if you liked The Chalk Man, then you are going to love it.

I’d like to thank Jenny Platt and Michael Joseph for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of this brilliant and engrossing novel.

C. J. Tudor was born in Salisbury and grew up in Nottingham, and has recently moved to Kent with her partner and young daughter. Her love of writing, especially the dark and macabre, started young. When her peers were reading Judy Blume, she was devouring Stephen King and James Herbert. Over the years she has had a variety of jobs, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, dog walker, voiceover artist, television presenter, copywriter and, now, author. Her first novel, The Chalk Man, was a Sunday Times bestseller in both hardback and paperback and sold in thirty-nine territories.

Publication: 7th February 2019 – Transworld

The irresistible new standalone from Sophie Kinsella is a story of love, empowerment and an IOU that changes everything . . .

Fixie Farr can’t help herself. Straightening a crooked object, removing a barely-there stain, helping out a friend . . . she just has to put things right. It’s how she got her nickname, after all. 

So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, Fixie not only agrees, she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank her, the computer’s owner, Sebastian, scribbles her an IOU – but of course Fixie never intends to call in the favour.

That is, until her teenage crush, Ryan, comes back into her life and needs her help – and Fixie turns to Seb. But things don’t go according to plan, and now Fixie owes Seb: big time.

Soon the pair are caught up in a series of IOUs – from small favours to life-changing debts – and Fixie is torn between the past she’s used to and the future she deserves. 

Does she have the courage to fix things for herself and fight for the life, and love, she really wants?

For me, Sophie Kinsella’s novels are a certainty. Whenever one of her books comes out I go and buy a copy, sometimes without reading the blurb first. Her heroines are realistic, engaging, funny, and familiar; her stories are refreshing, entertaining, and completely immersive; the author’s writing style is always clear, fluid, and simple so that it’s impossible to put her novels down.

While waiting and hoping for a new Shopaholic novel, I am really enjoying her stand-alone novels and her last one, I OWE YOU ONE, has quckly become one of my favourite behind Can You Keep A Secret? and My (Not) So Perfect Life.

Who is the protagonist? Fixie Farr is a young woman living in London where she works for the family business. She is funny, loyal, and she wants to fix everything and everyone around her. When something is not right, her fingers starts to twitch and she has this urgent need to put in order, whether it is removing a stain that no one else notices or help her best friend figure out why her husband doesn’t want to have a baby anymore. She wants to make everyone happy so she follows her late father’s wishes and she always puts her family first, even when her older brother and sister don’t seem to care about her feelings or what’s best for the business. Then, there is Ryan, her teenage crush who just came back into her life and she would do anything to keep it there. That’s why she asks for Sebastian’s help. He is a stranger she met in a coffee shop and who owes her a favour after she saved his laptop from a collapsing ceiling. From that moment Fixie and Sebastian find themselves in each other’s debt and spending more and more time together.

Like in all Sophie Kinsella’s novels, romance has an important part but it’s not at the centre of the story. I OWE YOU ONE focuses on family, on Fixie’s relationship with her siblings, and learning to put herself first every once in a while. I liked how she developed and how she matured throughout the novel and how she conquered her fears. There are life lessons, some inspirational moments, and a few hilarious scenes that made me laugh out which are typical of this author’s novels.

I OWE YOU ONE is a brilliant and captivating addition to a fantastic collection of novels by an author that never lets me down and I am already looking forward to whatever comes next.

 

 

Publication: 5th February 2019 – Aria

Charlie Maddison loves being an architect in London, but when she finds out her boyfriend, Dominic, is actually married, she runs back to the beautiful countryside of Westenbury and her parents.

Charlie’s sister Daisy, a landscape gardener, is also back home in desperate need of company and some fun. Their great-grandmother, Madge – now in her early nineties – reveals she has a house, Holly Close Farm, mysteriously abandoned over sixty years ago, and persuades the girls to project manage its renovation.

As work gets underway, the sisters start uncovering their family’s history, and the dark secrets that are hidden at the Farm.

 A heart-breaking tale of wartime romance, jealousy and betrayal slowly emerges, but with a moral at its end: true love can withstand any obstacle, and, before long, Charlie dares to believe in love again too…

Charlotte “Charlie” Maddison has a good life. A great job as an architect for a big firm in London and a handsome boyfriend who also happens to be her boss and married with children as she discovers when she finds his wife waiting for her on her doorstep. Single, jobless, and homeless, Charlie has no choice but to move back to Yorkshire to live with her parents, her sister, and her grandmothers. Things start to turn up when her 94-year-old great-grandmother Madge asks her to supervise the renovation of her house, Holly Close Farm. The only problem? Nobody in the family seemed to know about the existence of this place. Between her new job and a new love life, Charlie hears the beautiful and emotional story of a forbidden love story set during World War II.

COMING HOME TO CLOSE FARM is a beautiful, moving, and romantic novel. I found myself laughing, especially at Charlie’s family dynamics, but there were also many emotional moments. The characters are very likable: Charlie is engaging and determined, Madge is strong-minded and sharp, Daisy, Charlie’s sister, is lively and fun, and Kate, Charlie’s mother, is entertaining and it’s the character that made me laugh most (I loved that she used to talk to her defunct father whose ashes she kept on a shelf near the gin and tonic – and not in a creepy way).

The small town setting and the characteristic farmhouse fit perfectly with the atmosphere of the story and the author’s brilliant writing keeps the reader engrossed in the novel. COMING HOME TO HOLLY CLOSE FARM is a beautiful story of true love, family, deception, and also murder. A story full of romance, secrets, and second chances and I’d like to thank Vicky and Aria for inviting me to take part in the blog tour.

Julie Houston is the author of THE ONE SAVING GRACE, GOODNESS, GRACE AND ME and LOOKING FOR LUCY, a Kindle top 100 general bestseller and a Kindle #1 bestseller. She is married, with two teenage children and a mad cockerpoo and, like her heroine, lives in a West Yorkshire village. She is also a teacher and a magistrate.

 

Follow Julie:

Twitter: @juliehouston2

Facebook: @JulieHoustonauthor

Follow Aria

Website: www.ariafiction.com

Twitter: @aria_fiction

Facebook: @ariafiction

Instagram: @ariafiction

Buy links:

Amazon: http://amzn.eu/d/2Q4hjjW

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2SunhcY

iBooks: https://apple.co/2rmy9OL

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2Ul2evq

 

Publication: 7th February 2019 – Orion Books

Alicia lives a life most dream of. She lives in a house in one of the most desirable areas of London. She is a famous painter, and her husband, Gabriel, is an in-demand fashion photographer. Her life is perfect.

That is, until one evening when Gabriel returns late from a fashion shoot and Alicia shoots him five times and then never speaks another word.

Theo Faber, a forensic psychotherapist, has been consumed with the case for five years, and is the only person able to unravel the mystery of why.

 The Silent Patient is a heart-stopping debut thriller about a woman’s brutal and random act of violence against her husband – and the man obsessed with discovering why.

 

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour of THE SILENT PATIENT. I’d like to start by thanking Tracy Fenton for inviting me to take part and Poppy Stimpson and Orion for providing me with a copy of this brilliant and addictive novel.

This novel blew my mind. It held me captivated for two days and, weeks later, I still can’t stop thinking about it. It is outstanding, full of twists, and with a shocking ending from which I haven’t recovered, yet.

At the centre of the story is Alicia Berenson, a successful painter with a seemingly perfect marriage and life until, one night, she is found standing covered in blood and holding a gun next to the body of her dead husband, Gabriel. Why did Alicia kill her husband? But more importantly, why did she stop talking?

Alicia is a tragic and enigmatic character and, even though she doesn’t speak, we discover her side of the story through the pages of her journal: she writes about her art, her family, her friends, and her marriage to Gabriel. Alicia is not the only puzzle the reader tries to solve because the author takes us also inside the mind of Theo Faber, a forensic psychotherapist with an obsession for Alicia. For Theo, Alicia is a mystery that he is trying to uncover so he gets a job at The Grove, the mental institution where she is being treated, and becomes her new therapist. As Theo tries to get inside Alicia’s mind, we, the readers, are inside his head: his troubled childhood, his marriage, his years of therapy, his new job at The Grove. However, despite Theo’s honesty, he still has a few surprises for the reader.

Now, let’s talk about the ending. WOW!!! I really didn’t see it coming. After I read that shocking revelation I went back and read it again, because I wasn’t sure I read it right the first time. That is a big, jaw-dropping twist that left me speechless and made me appreciate how complex and masterly-plotted is the novel and how good is the author to never give anything away until the very end.

Unputdownable, chilling, original, superb, a stunning debut thriller that deserves all the rave reviews it’s getting, THE SILENT PATIENT is definitely the one book to read in 2019!!!

Alex Michaelides was born in Cyprus in 1977. He wrote the film The Devil You Know starring Rosamund Pike and co-wrote The Brits are Coming, starring Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Stephen Fry, Parker Posey and Sofia Vergara. The Silent Patient is first novel. He was inspired to write it while doing a post graduate course in psychotherapy and working part-time at a secure psychiatric unit for two years. Brad Pitt’s Plan B are developing the film of The Silent Patient: they have won Best Film Oscars for The Departed, 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight.

 

Publication: 7th February 2019 – Michael Joseph

Jón Eiríksson buried one wife this year. But how long can his secrets remain hidden?

1686, Iceland. A wild, isolated landscape that can swallow a man without so much as a volcanic gasp, where superstitious Icelanders are haunted by all-too-recent memories of witch trials.

Rósa is leaving her home in Skalholt. Betrothed unexpectedly to the mysterious and wealthy Jón Eiríksson, Rosa travels with her new husband to his isolated, windswept village of Stykkisholmur. Here, the villagers are suspicious of outsiders, and seem fearful of Rosa.

Whispers follow Jón around the unexplained death of his first wife, who he buried in secret in the dead of the night. And Rósa has her own suspicions. Refusing to answer any questions about his first wife, Jón instead gives Rosa a small glass figurine, a glass woman.

Rósa feels a presence in the house, and she can’t shake a dread that darkness is coming. She fears she will be its next victim.

How long before the glass woman shatters?

 

I really enjoyed reading THE GLASS WOMAN. It’s an historical novel with lot of suspense and also a bit of romance. Set in Iceland where the cold and the long long hours of darkness give a chilling and haunting atmosphere to the story, THE GLASS WOMAN is the story of Rósa, a young woman who, to save her mother from facing a hard winter, accepts to marry Jón, a wealthy merchant, and accepts to move with him to his remote village of Stykkishólmur, leaving behind not only her mother and her home, but also her best friend and first love Páll. After Rósa arrives at her new home, Jón forbids her from talking to the other villagers and she has to spend her days being a “biddable” and “obedient wife”, meaning that she has to worry only about cleaning and cooking for him. Rósa is not easily subjugated and she tries to befriend some of the women of the village, especially because she wants to find out what really happened to Anna, Jón’s first wife.

Rósa is a fantastic character. She is strong and determined and she is one of the few women who could read and write, which was unusual at the time and it was considered a sign of witchcraft. Even though she aims to please her husband, she doesn’t hesitate to disobey his orders. Her fears and suspicions keep the tension always high and her loneliness fit perfectly with the isolation of the village.

The author did well her researches. Her detailed descriptions of the Icelandic landscape, of the harsh weather conditions, and of the traditions and the myths kept me completely captivated. The story is very suspenseful and atmospheric. Page after page, there is this creepy feeling that keeps you on the edge of your seat, expecting for something bad to happen. I was really pleased with the ending of the novel which I found satisfactory, moving, and sad all at the same time.

I’d like to thank Jenny Platt and Michael Joseph for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for providing me with a copy of this atmospheric, chilling, and engrossing novel.

CAROLINE LEA grew up in Jersey and gained a First in English Literature & Creative Writing from Warwick University. From there, Caroline became a teacher of English and drama and was Head of English at a Birmingham boys’ grammar school. She now works and writes from home in Warwick, and is a mother to two young boys. This is her first novel published in the UK.