Tag: blogtour

Blog Tour/Review: It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan

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ItWasOnlyEverYou

I’m thrilled to be one of the co-hosts for today’s stop on the blog tour for It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan and to bring you my review of this luscious historical romance.  Do check out today posts from my co-hosts Celeste Loves Books and SibzzReads.

And while you’re reading my review, why not smooch along to the song, ‘It Was Only Ever You’

About the Book

Patrick Murphy has charm to burn and a singing voice to die for. Many people will recognise his talent. Many women will love him. Rose, the sweetheart he leaves behind in Ireland, can never forget him and will move heaven and earth to find him again, long after he has married another woman. Ava, the heiress with no self-confidence except on the dance floor, falls under his spell. And tough Sheila Klein, orphaned by the Holocaust and hungry for success as a music manager, she will be ruthless in her determination to unlock his extraordinary star quality. But in the end, Patrick Murphy’s heart belongs to only one of them. Which one will it be?

Format: Paperback Publisher: Head of Zeus Pages: 389
Publication: 13th Jul 2017 Genre: Historical Romance

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find It Was Only Ever You on Goodreads

My Review

 

In It Was Only Ever You, the author has created three distinctive female characters. I loved Ava who, in her ‘lucky suit’, made me think of the young Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. To me she was the most fully realised female character and the one I found myself most engaged with and who I rooted for most.  I also liked how, in Sheila, the author created a picture of a strong, independent woman, not afraid to challenge society’s expectations and break through into an industry dominated by men. (I pictured her as Celeste Holm in Gentleman’s Agreement). Beautiful, beloved Rose was the character I felt least drawn to, although I’m not sure quite why. Perhaps it was her cool, perfect beauty (which if we’re indulging in film star comparisons can only be to a young Grace Kelly) or the fact she was the catalyst for so many of the dramatic events in the book.

 

Alongside these three strong female characters, Patrick Murphy has a tough job to gain the reader’s attention and sympathies. He’s handsome, charming and the author does a great job of communicating how his wonderful voice is so attractive to women. However, he’s also rather naive and his poor choices will set in train unintended and tragic consequences.

Perhaps surprisingly, because he is not at first sight that attractive a figure, the male character I really engaged with was Iggy Morrow, the music impresario. I felt the author created a really believable character and his journey from loner to someone prepared to make a commitment to another person for the first time in his life was credible and rather moving.

Amongst many other compelling aspects of this book is the evocation of the New York of the period with its dance halls, jazz clubs, show bands and the advent of the sound that would revolutionize the music scene – rock’n’roll.

‘But with this new, strange rockabilly sound [Sheila] found her hips were swaying from side to side at a speed that felt fast – too fast – and yet she was compelled to move in a way that felt utterly natural. It was as if the beat had injected her, and everyone else there, with a kind of electricity. Her body seemed to understand what to do in a way it had never done before now.’

If that doesn’t make you want to listen to ‘Rock Around the Clock’ I don’t know what will! Similarly, I loved the picture of the tight-knit Irish émigré community, where everyone knows one another – making subsequent events entirely believable.

The author gives us tantalising hints about some of the characters’ earlier lives. I’m curious – and greedy – so I would have loved more about the back stories of Rose, Sheila and Rose’s mother, Eleanor. For example – no spoilers, as these facts are revealed in the opening chapters of the book – information about Rose’s biological parents, more detail about what happened to Sheila’s family and what in Eleanor’s past made her so fearful for her daughter.

The book ended satisfyingly for me with two of the three women being rewarded precisely in the way I’d hoped for and the third getting just what she deserved. I’ll leave you to read the book and work out what I mean and which is which!

It Was Only Ever You takes the reader on a wonderful journey from rural Ireland to the excitement of New York. There is love and drama and sadness, there are partings and reunions, all set against the backdrop of the sheer joy of music.

I received a review copy courtesy of publishers Head of Zeus in return for an honest and unbiased review.

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In three words: Emotional, dramatic, stylish

Try something similar…The Summer House Party by Caro Fraser

KateKerriganAbout the Author

Kate Kerrigan is an author living and working in Ireland. Her novels are Recipes for a Perfect Marriage, The Miracle of Grace, Ellis Island, City of Hope, Land of Dreams and The Lost Garden. Kate began her career as an editor and journalist, editing many of Britain’s most successful young women’s magazines before returning to her native Ireland in the 1990’s to edit Irish Tatler. She writes a weekly column in the Irish Mail about her life in Killala, County Mayo – and contributes regularly to RTE’s radio’s Sunday Miscellany. Her novel, The Dress, published by Head of Zeus was shortlisted at the Irish Book Awards in 2015 and her new novel, It Was Only Ever You, was published in hardback in October 2016.

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Blog Tour/Guest Post: The Dark Isle by Clare Carson

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I’m delighted to host today’s stop on the blog tour for The Dark Isle by Clare Carson, the thrilling conclusion to the Sam Coyle trilogy. And I’m thrilled to say Clare has written a fascinating article about how she goes about communicating a sense of time and place in her writing.

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TheDarkIsle2About the Book

Sam grew up in the shadow of the secret state. Her father was an undercover agent, full of tall stories about tradecraft and traitors. Then he died, killed in the line of duty. Now Sam has travelled to Hoy, in Orkney, to piece together the puzzle of his past. What she finds is a tiny island of dramatic skies, swooping birds, rugged sea stacks and just four hundred people. An island remote enough to shelter someone who doesn’t want to be found. An island small enough to keep a secret…

Format: Hardcover Publisher: Head of Zeus Pages: 416
Publication: 1st June 2017 (UK) Genre: Thriller    

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ Amazon.com ǀ
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Dark Isle on Goodreads

Guest Post: ‘The Dark Isle: Finding a Sense of Time and Place’ by Clare Carson

The Dark Isle is set in Orkney and London in 1976 and 1989. The sense of place and time is integral to the story – I try to bring landscapes to life by portraying them through the eyes of the characters I’m writing about. In The Dark Isle, places are described as seen through the eyes of Sam, the protagonist, both as a child and as a young woman.

I learned to see landscapes in different ways when I was researching women’s health in rural Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a country of extremes; it has beautiful, lush green valleys and cool mountains, but these are often places that were once owned by white Rhodesians. Most poor black women were pushed by the colonial government into the arid lowlands where barely anything grows.

I wanted to talk to these women, so I ended up staying for a year in a sun-scorched village, ringed by thorn bushes. I hated it for the first few weeks. I could barely move in the heat and the giant crickets and millipedes that roamed the sandy paths made me recoil. But after a while, as I talked to more women, I started to see the village differently. There was a human geography and history – the chief’s house, sacred grounds and trees, the traditional healer’s hut, the bushlands where the guerrillas hid and camped during the war of independence. There was even some greenery in the small gardens carefully tended by women growing a few vegetables to add to their meagre diet.

Later, I returned to the area after a few weeks away; the evening sun was dropping over the sand, the vast baobabs were silhouetted black against the crimson sky and the lovingly painted yellow and pink walls of the mud huts glowed magically in the dusk. The landscape was stunning and moving, it had just taken me a while to see it.

That experience has stayed with me. I know that landscapes are like people – first impressions can be misleading. And I also know that people bring landscapes to life – a sense of place comes from the stories that are buried in the rocks and trees, and from the way that different characters view the environments in which they live or find themselves.

In The Dark Isle, it is Sam’s view of Orkney and London which gives the book its sense of time and place. The way these landscapes are portrayed change and take on a different colour as Sam ages and faces up to the legacy of her father and her emotional battles with her past.

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ClareCarsonAbout the Author

Clare Carson is an anthropologist and works in international development, specialising in human rights. Her father was an undercover policeman in the 1970s.   She drew on her own experiences to create the character of Sam, a rebellious eighteen year old who is nevertheless determined to make her father proud.

You can find out more about Clare’s experience growing up as the daughter of an undercover policeman here

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