Book Review ~ The Hidden Girls by Rebecca Whitney

Pan
10 June 2021

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

How does the saying go? Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you . . . ?

For Ruth, a new mother recovering from postpartum psychosis, every day is difficult and, after months spent hearing voices in the walls and trusting no one, she’s no longer confident in her own judgement. Neither, it seems, is anyone else.

So, when she hears a scream from the local petrol station one night, she initially decides it must be her mind playing tricks again. The police, too, are polite but firm: she must stop calling them every time she thinks she hears something. And her husband is frustrated: he’d hoped Ruth was getting better at last.

Ruth can’t quite let it go . . . What if there was a scream? What if it was someone in trouble? Someone who needs Ruth’s help?

My thoughts...

After being diagnosed with postpartum psychosis Ruth is closely watched by her husband Giles and although Ruth appears to be getting better, there are still occasions when her behaviour is cause for concern, especially when Ruth places her baby daughter, Bess, in dangerous situations. Motherhood is a dark and isolating experience for Ruth who sees and hears danger constantly, and so when she reports hearing a scream coming from the direction of the local petrol station, no-one, not even the police, believe that Ruth can be relied upon to tell the truth.

Ruth's desperate battle with her mental health is powerful and even when those around seem to have her best interests at heart, Ruth struggles to connect with both her husband, and her neighbour, Sandra, who is charged with keeping an eye on Ruth whilst Giles is at work. As the story progresses Ruth's relationship with Giles and Sandra is called into question and though for a large part of the novel Ruth is the classic unstable narrator there are moments when she seems to be the only decent person in the story. The story captures the darkly isolating nature of Ruth's illness, and the author carefully brings the added mystery at the heart of the novel into the story, both enhancing and highlighting Ruth's constant battle with herself.

The Hidden Girls looks at a severe mental health issue from a different perspective, and has woven a deeply troubling psychological suspense story about Ruth's fight to be heard in a sea of doubt.

About the author

 

Rebecca Whitney completed a BA in Creative Arts at Nottingham Trent University and found much of her art and performance work inspired by the written word. Her other loves are music and film, and on graduating she moved to london where she worked form a record company before switching to TV and film production, moving up from tea-girl to production co-coordinator, producer and executive producer on music videos , commercials and documentaries, After returning to Sussex where she'd grown up, she completed the creative writing course at Sussex University. Rebecca loves in Brighton and The Hidden Girls is her second novel.

Twitter @RebeccaJWhitney

@panmacmillan

📖 Blog Tour ~ The Rose Garden by Tracy Rees

 

Thrilled to be one of the stops on the closing day of this blog tour 

Pan Macmillan
2 September 2021

Thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

and to Random Things Tours for the invitation to the blog tour

1895. Hampstead, London.

Olive Westallen lives a privileged, if rather lonely, life in her family’s grand Hampstead home. But she has radical plans for the future of her family – plans that will shock the high-society world she inhabits. For her new neighbour, twelve-year-old Ottilie Finch, London is an exciting playground to explore. Her family have recently arrived from Durham, under a cloud of scandal that Otty is blissfully unaware of. The only shadow over her days is her mother’s mysterious illness, which keeps her to her room. When Mabs is offered the chance to become Mrs Finch’s companion, it saves her from a desperate life on the canals. Little does she know that all is not as picture-perfect as it seems. Mabs is about to become tangled in the secrets that chased the Finches from their last home, and trapped in an impossible dilemma .

📖 My thoughts..

Eighteen year old Mabs Daley finds working on the London Docks to be harsh but with her younger brothers and sisters to support Mabs has little choice but to continue with this back breaking work, that is, until her friend tells her of a job, in service, in the home of the Finch family who have newly arrived in London from Durham. Employed as a companion to the melancholic, Mrs Finch brings Mabs into contact with twelve year old Ottilie Finch, who, left to her own devices explores London with all the enthusiasm of a child breaking free of the restrictions placed upon her by society. Meanwhile, Olive Westallen, a rather unusual, twenty eight year old, uses her family wealth to do good deeds but in doing so shocks polite society.

What follows is a detailed novel which explores the boundaries that Victorian women had placed upon them, not just by a patriarchal society who viewed independent women as something of an anathema, but also even in families, sensibilities could so easily be troubled by the wrong actions. Social attitudes were often greatly offended by doing and saying the wrong things to the wrong people and yet all three of these quite unusual characters found that once their lives started to intertwine a connection between them was allowed to flourish in the most unlikeliest of circumstances. The three voices of Mabs, Ottilie and Olive come cross loud and clear, from the poverty and hardship of Mabs’s family, the opulence of Olive’s Hampstead mansion, to Ottilie, and her rather fractured family, especially her mother, coming somewhere in the middle.

Beautifully written, with an authentic feel for time and place, the late-Victorian era comes alive in The Rose Garden. The author does a great job of bringing everything together in a compelling story which cuts across the social divide and explores family secrets, social mobility and the tentative emergence of women battling to have their voices heard in a male dominated society.

About the Author

Tracy Rees was the first winner of the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition. She has also won the Love Stories Best Historical Read award and been shortlisted for the RNA Epic Romantic Novel of the Year. A Cambridge graduate, Tracy had a successful career in non-fiction publishing before retraining for a second career practising and teaching humanistic counselling. She has also been a waitress, bartender, shop assistant, estate agent, classroom assistant and workshop leader. Tracy divides her time between the Gower Peninsula of South Wales and London.

Twitter @AuthorTracyRees #TheRoseGarden

@panmacmillan

@RandomTTours

Blog Tour Review and Author interview ~ Elaine Everest

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be hosting today's stop on the

 The Teashop Girls Blog Tour with an exclusive interview with the author

JR2: Hi and a very warm welcome to Jaffareadstoo. 

Elaine : Thank you so much for hosting me on your blog.

What can you tell us about The Teashop Girls that won’t give too much of the plot away?

The Teashop Girls is set on the Kent coast in the towns of Ramsgate and Margate during 1940 and follows three girls who work as Nippies for the iconic Lyons teashops. The towns are very much at the forefront of the rescue of our troops during the evacuation of Dunkirk. WW2 affects the girls’ lives but they still find time to fall in love, fall out of love, and have adventures.

The Teashop Girls is a lovely title and so reminiscent of a bygone era. In your research for the book did you discover anything which surprised you? 

I thoroughly enjoyed researching what it was like to be a Nippy and was surprised to find that many of these waitresses went on the make good marriages as they met men from the upper classes. Sadly, for my girls their manageress disapproved of any involvement with the opposite sex!

You always bring your characters to life in such a warm-hearted way, where do you get your inspiration for your stories, and what are the challenges of creating new characters? 

Thank you for your kind comment. I base my characters on people who live/lived in the areas where I set my books. For the Woolworths series I lived in the town and grew up with such lovely characters that when I needed an elderly grumpy neighbour I could see just that person. A shy young girl coming to the area – I thought of my school friends from the sixties… However, my characters are never based on one single person.

Starting a new series I had to make my ‘girls’ different to those from other books. I started by looking at my main character, Rose. She was a Nippy and lived with her mum, who owns a guesthouse. For a while I was stumped as I tried to think how to make her different until I was browsing YouTube listening to music from the era. How about if Rose wanted to be a singer and loved the big bands of that time? I was delighted with my idea and rushed to tell my husband even though he was in bed snoring soundly! 

Are you a plotter, or a see where it goes kind of writer?

I’m afraid I can’t be a ‘pantser’ as I first have to show my agent and my publisher the outline of my story. However, within the outline of that story I can write, within reason, whatever comes to mind to enhance and make the story more interesting. I have to confess that in one of my books I was to kill off a character. When the time came, I couldn’t do it as I could see he would be vital to storylines in future books – if they were commissioned. So, I had him break his leg instead!

Your sagas are always eagerly anticipated, as one book ends, do you already have the idea in place for a new story? 

I do. Sometimes it is annoying as I want to start writing. As I wrote The Teashop Girls I was thinking about another Woolworth book set after the war. Thankfully my publisher liked the idea and I’ve just finished writing it and it will be published in early 2020. However, as I wrote that book my head was back in Ramsgate with the Nippies and I was making notes…

I also write short stories so as soon as an idea pops into my head I have to make a note of it before I forget – that so easily happens these days! 

Pan
25 April 2019

My thanks to the author, publisher and edpr for my copy of this book
and the invitation to be part of the blog tour

The Teashop Girls is a warm and moving tale of friendship and love in wartime, by the bestselling author of the Woolworths series, Elaine Everest. 

It is early 1940 and World War Two has already taken a hold on the country. Rose Neville works as a Lyon’s Teashop Nippy on the Kent coast alongside her childhood friends, the ambitious Lily and Katie, whose fiancé is about to be posted overseas in the navy. As war creates havoc in Europe, Rose relies on the close friendship of her friends and her family. 

When Capt. Benjamin Hargreaves enters the teashop one day, Rose is immediately drawn to him. But as Lyon’s forbids courting between staff and customers, she tries to put the handsome officer out of her mind. 

In increasingly dark and dangerous times, Rose fears there may not be time to waste. But is the dashing captain what he seems?

My thoughts..

The Teashop Girls make up a trio of young waitresses who work at the Ramsgate branch of the Lyons tearooms. Rose, Lily and Katie have been friends since their school days and working together as 'nippies' helps to keep their special camaraderie strong. The work in the tearoom is demanding and standards are high as the reputation of the Lyon brand depends upon the success of the tea rooms, but in 1940 with WW2 at its height, times are proving difficult for all of them.

As always, the author writes this type of historical saga really well, and gives us characters who feel realistic right from the start. The other supporting characters are a fascinating bunch, especially Rose's mother, Flora who runs a local guest house and has secrets of her own, and also Mildred who is a rough diamond with a heart of gold. I very soon start to care about what happens to each of them and hoped that everything would work out well, but, of course, to say too much about the challenges they all face would be to give too much away and this is one of those warm-hearted stories which is best read without any spoilers.

This is a really lovely look at female friendship and how in times of adversity it's important for them all to pull together, however, it's not all plain sailing for them as each of the girls have their specific worries but it is how they deal with these problems which makes the story such an interesting book to read.

The Teashop Girls is a lovely atmospheric story about a bygone age, which brings to life just what it was like to live, love and work in the shadow of war, whilst working for one of the iconic brands of the age.

About the Author

Elaine Everest, author of bestselling novels The Woolworths Girls, The Butlins Girls, Christmas at Woolworths, and Wartime at Woolworths was born and brought up in North West Kent, where many of her books are set. She has been a freelance writer for twenty-two years and has written widely for women's magazines and national newspapers, with both short stories and features. Her non-fiction books for dog owners have been very popular and led to broadcasting on radio about our four legged friends. Elaine has been heard discussing many topics on radio from canine subjects to living with a husband under her feet when redundancy looms.

When she isn't writing, Elaine runs The Write Place creative writing school at The Howard Venue in Hextable, Kent and has a long list of published students. Elaine lives with her husband, Michael, and their Polish Lowland Sheepdog, Henry, in Swanley, Kent and is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, The Crime Writers Association, The Society of Women Writers & Journalists and The Society of Authors.

Twitter @elaineverest #TheTeashopGirls

@PanMacmillan

@ed_pr

Amazon UK

Review ~ Bad Twins by Rebecca Chance

✨Summer Sizzler✨

Pan
26 July 2018

My thanks to edpr for my copy of this book

What's it all about...

In a game where the ultimate prize is power beyond your wildest dreams, you should never underestimate your competitors, even if they are family . . . and, it turns out, twins can be the most dangerous rivals of all . . .

Bad Twins by bestselling author Rebecca Chance explores vicious sibling rivalry in this gripping thriller.

My thoughts about it..

When Jeffrey Sachs, CEO of the prestigious Sachs hotel chain, introduces his new fiancé to his grown up children, he also announces that he is going to step away from the company he has created and in six months’ time one of his children will be named CEO in his place. What is then unleashed is sibling rivalry on a grand scale and nothing and no-one will stand in their way...not even each other. And twins, Charlotte and Bella, fight dirtiest of them all..

Pure escapism from beginning to end, Bad Twins is a cheeky roller coaster of a ride through boardrooms and bedrooms, and shows in raucous detail the lengths that the Sachs siblings will go to in order to outwit and out manoeuvre each other. Power struggles, manipulation and dirty dealings all combine in this lively family drama.

There is no doubt that this author is the absolute queen of the glamorous thriller, with highly detailed sexual shenanigans playing out alongside some impressive back stabbing, Bad Twins is an absolutely perfect summer sizzler.

About the Author

Born in London, Rebecca Chance read English Literature at Cambridge and wrote for various newspapers and music magazines before moving to Tuscany to focus on writing books. She has written several best selling novels including Bad Brides, Mile High, Killer Diamonds and Killer Affair. She lives in London with her husband and her interests include cocktail drinking, men's gymnastics and reality TV, including the Real Housewives.

Website

Twitter @MsRebeccaChance #BadTwins

Bad Twins will be published by Pan on the 26th July 2018

Review ~ Scarred for Life by Kerry Wilkinson

Jessica Daniel #9
Pan Macmillan
2015

This is now the second book that I have read by this talented author. The first book, for me, was book 8, so some of the characters in this, book 9, were familiar, and the addition of a couple of new people, add light and shade, to this dark and gritty crime story.

I read the book over the space of a few hours, quickly becoming familiar with the way Jessica operates, and the way in which the story is allowed to dominate without getting overly complicated by too much police procedure. As always, the story is fast and furious with more than enough grit and grime to keep my interest from start to finish. There are lots of red herrings and Jess and her team have problems aplenty in trying to solve the murder mystery at the heart of the novel which is dark and complex. I really enjoy the Mancunian background which is explored in fine detail. The city streets and places therein are familiar to me which, of course, adds special interest.

This is a worthy continuation of the series and I look forward to picking up the story again in book 10..

For Richer, For Poorer ~ Jessica Daniel #10 is due for publication in February 2016.

Best read with a paper cup of mediocre coffee and a, probably stale, take out tuna sandwich, wrapped in cling film..

About the Author

Find him on his website

or follow him on Twitter @kerrywk

My thanks to Pan Macmillan for my copy of this book.

~***~

Review ~ The Angel Tree by Lucinda Riley

Pan
2015

This is an interesting book to review because some readers may have already read this when it was first published in 1995 under the authors' previous pen name of Lucinda Edmonds. Since it would appear that the time is right for a reissue, the story has been redone, keeping some elements of the original but with some sections reworked, thus breathing new life into a story which is as fresh and characterful now, as it was in its original format.

The story begins as Greta returns to Marchmont Hall, in Monmouthshire, Wales after an absence of thirty years. Greta's memory of her life at Marchmont was irretrievably damaged when she was involved in a dreadful accident which altered her memory thus making her recollection of her previous life hazy and filled with shadows.Much has happened to Greta during this time, her life and that of her family has been very eventful, not without tragedy, and always with an element of misfortune. 

What then follows is a cleverly and intricately constructed family saga which spans several years and which flips forwards and backwards in time, mainly following the fortunes of Greta and her daughter Cheska. The peripheral characters who flit into and out of the story are strong and meaningful and add a real sense of continuity. The story is long, coming it at over 600 pages but as always the story draws you in from the beginning. The characters become as familiar as friends, some you learn to like whilst others become deeply unlikable but as always the strength of the story lies with the telling. The fine attention to detail, the authenticity of the setting, and the gloriously good story telling all combine to make this into another commendable novel from this talented author.

I hadn't read the book when it was first published, so was I was perfectly happy to read The Angel Tree with no preconceptions of what had gone before. I'm sure, however, that those readers who  read the novel when it was entitled 'Not Quite An Angel' will find much to enjoy in this reissued version.

Best read with a cinnamon latte and an enticing selection of Dunkin Donuts....

About the Author

Follow Lucinda Riley on Twitter @lucindariley

Find her on Facebook

~***~