Blog Tour ~ A Forsaken Friend by Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of A Forsaken Friend Blog Tour

Lakewater Press
21 March 2018

My thanks to the authors and Random Things Tour for my copy of the book
and the invitation to be part of this blog tour

Blurb:

 No-one said friendship was easy.

Things can't get much worse for Teri Meyer. If losing her job at the university and the regular allowance from her dad's factory isn't bad enough, now her ex-best friend has gone and stolen her ex-husband! Well, to hell with them all. A few weeks in the countryside at her brother's smallholding should do the trick - and the gorgeous and god-like neighbour might help.

But then there's Declan, not to mention Duck's Arse back in Yorkshire...

It's not as if Lee Harper set out to fall in love with her best friend's ex-husband. But, for once, her love life is looking up - except for all the elephants in the room, not to mention Mammy's opinion on her dating a twice-divorced man. Perhaps things aren't as rosy as she first thought. And now with one family crisis after another, Lee's juggling more roles - and emotions - than she ever imagined.

Maybe sharing her life with a man wasn't such a grand idea.

My thoughts ...

A Forsaken Friend starts where the previous book, A Falling Friend, left off and reintroduces us to the same characters who entertained us, first time around, with their antics. Time has moved on a little - Terri is in a precarious place, she has recently lost her job at the university, only to then have her father’s business go bust, so when her best friend, Lee, start a relationship with her ex-husband, Terri finally loses patience. However, Lee didn't start off wanting to get together with Dan, Terri's ex, and she still isn't sure she wants the relationship to go to the next stage of giving him a key to her house, but well, life has a funny old way of interfering in the quiet order of things.

With the two women's friendship on a very precarious footing there is an element of rivalry between the two and their frosty relationship is fun to read. I enjoyed reading of their petty jealousies and barbed comments. And yet, as the story develops,when Terri and Lee need someone to lean on, well, it just shows that when the going gets tough, strong friendship will invariably come to the rescue.

This talented team of authors write well and with great enthusiasm bring these lively characters to life. I really enjoyed watching where the story would take them this time around and found them just as feisty and determined in this follow up as they were in the first book. I especially liked having both Terri and Lee’s point of view, and the short and snappy chapters help to bring them, faults an all, to vibrant life.

I am always intrigued by a writing duo and spend some time trying to pinpoint individual writing styles. I can never work out which author writes which chapter but then, that really doesn’t matter as, collectively, the whole of the story is so well done that the writing appears seamless.

The Friends trilogy is set to continue and I hope we won’t be waiting too long for the conclusion.

About The Authors

Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape are both former newspaper journalists with extensive experience of working for national and regional papers and magazines, and in public relations. 

More recently they have worked in higher education, teaching journalism – Sue at Sheffield Hallam and Susan at Leeds Trinity University. 

The pair, who have been friends for 25 years, wrote two successful journalism text books together – Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction and Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction (both published by Sage). 

Their debut novel, A Falling Friend, published by Lakewater Press, has been followed by a second book, A Failing Friend, in their Friends trilogy. 

Sue, who is married with two grown-up daughters, loves reading, writing and Nordic walking in the beautiful countryside near her Yorkshire home. 

Susan is married and lives in a village near Leeds, and, when not writing, loves walking and cycling in the Yorkshire Dales. She is also a member of a local ukulele orchestra.

Sue and Susan blog about books at Book Lovers' Book List 

Twitter @SueF_Writer #ForsakenFriend

Twitter @wordfocus #ForsakenFriend

Amazon UK

Do take a look at other blog tour stops