Tag: contemporary fiction

#BlogTour #BookReview #Ad My Secret Sister by Lauren Westwood @rararesources

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My Secret Sister Full Tour Banner

Welcome to the first day of the blog tour for My Secret Sister by Lauren Westwood. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to take part in the tour and for my digital review copy. Do check out the posts by my tour buddies for today, Shari at My Reading Getaway and writer and blogger, Jessica Belmont.

My secret sister_1 large copyAbout the Book

Two DNA tests, one big lie…

“As I speed off in the ambulance holding my daughter’s hand, I wonder how I could have been so stupid. I should have made the bargain, paid the price – anything to avoid being right here, right now. A voice whispers in my head that I can’t silence. This is all your fault. You killed her. It’s her voice, the one I hear in my nightmares. The woman who stole my memories, the woman who stole my life. And, this time, I know she’s right.”

How far would you go to save your child?

Claire is living every mother’s worst nightmare. Her daughter, Jess, has been diagnosed with a rare illness and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant. With no match on the registry, Claire turns to a charismatic geneticist for help and embarks on a Genetic Journey to seek a familial match for her daughter.

On the other side of the country, Marianne suffers her eighth miscarriage. Her perfect life is rotting underneath, but she is determined to do whatever it takes to have a baby.

When DNA test results reveal that Claire and Marianne are half-sisters, Claire must face the dark lies of the past and make impossible choices about the future. Is her secret sister the answer to her prayers, or will she cost her everything?

Format: Paperback (426 pages)             Publisher: N/A
Publication date: 11th September 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Find My Secret Sister on Goodreads

Purchase links
Amazon UK
Link provided for convenience only, not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The events that unfold in My Secret Sister are narrated from the points of view of Marianne, Claire and Claire’s daughter, Becky. Marianne seems to have everything – a successful career as a lawyer, a lovely home – everything except the one thing she craves: a child.  Multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF treatment have left her physically and emotionally drianed, and have caused friction in her marriage to Tom. Claire’s life revolves around her youngest daughter Jess, leaving little time for her career, her husband Steve or her elder daughter, Becky.

In fact, Becky was the character I empathised with most. She feels left out because, understandably, all her mother’s attention is on her sister and guilty because she cannot help her sister. I really felt for her when she overhears her mother refer to her as ‘useless’ and doesn’t realise this relates only to her not being a suitable match for donating her bone marrow. With Jess confined to bed for much of the time, Becky finds herself on the frontline in the increasing conflict between her mother and her father, Steve. As she says, ‘I’m like a refugee caught between two warring armies’.  It would have been interesting to hear the perspective of Jess herself. She’s at the heart of things but we never hear her thoughts and feelings directly.

My Secret Sister is definitely a female dominated book with both Marianne’s husband, Tom, and Claire’s husband, Steve, being less than supportive for much of the time.  And I couldn’t quite share Claire and Marianne’s attraction to the ‘charismatic geneticist’, Dave, founder of MyStory, who provides the initial concidental link between the two women.

The book gradually builds to the development clearly trailed in the book description. From that point on it’s all about the consequences of the revelation and its impact on those involved. Towards the end of the book, the drama really kicks in with misfortune following misfortune, misstep following misstep and those involved enduring a ‘rollercoaster of moods and emotions’. An unexpected appearance towards the end of the book may come as a surprise to many but not, I think, to everyone.

Making DNA testing a central feature of the book allows the author to explore both its positive and negative aspects in a really interesting way. The way it can reveal previously unknown connections between people, provide insights into family history and heritage, even, as in the case, of Jess provide a literal lifeline. However, as the book demonstrates, it can also uncover unwelcome secrets that may cause a complete reassessment of what you thought you knew, the person you thought you were, as well as the people you thought you knew.

My Secret Sister is a perceptive and insightful exploration of the impact on personal relationships of potentially life-limiting illness and infertility on a family.  How such challenges can threaten marriages, cause friction within families and make people act out of character, unthinkingly saying and doing things they may later regret. If you love to immerse yourself in an intense family drama, My Secret Sister may be just the book for you.

In three words: Emotional, dramatic, intense

Try something similar: Everything Happens For A Reason by Katie Allen

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Lauren WestwoodAbout the Author

Lauren writes: My books explore the darkness and the light of the human spirit, and take you on an emotional journey. My Sister’s Secret is a tense and emotional drama about a mother’s race against time to save her daughter’s life. My Mother’s Silence is a gripping and romantic drama about homecoming and family secrets set in the wild Scottish highlands. It was shortlisted for the Jackie Collins Romantic Thriller Award 2020. The Daughter She Lost is a dark journey of self-discovery and overcoming the secrets of the past. My holiday romance Moonlight on the Thames is a love story to classical music and the healing power of love. It was a bestseller in urban fiction and top 100 Kindle book. My first three novels: Finding Home, Finding Secrets and Finding Dreams all feature mysterious old houses and intelligent, feisty contemporary heroines who set out to unravel the mysteries of the past. I also write award winning children’s books as Laurel Remington. I am originally from California, and now live in Surrey, UK with my partner and three daughters.

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My Secret Sister

#BookReview When the Music Stops by Joe Heap @fictionpubteam

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A note from Joe:

“I owe this book to my grandparents, John and Jean Sands, for sharing the stories that inspired it. In many ways their story is more remarkable than the one I have written.

At a summer season in Ramsgate, 1959, two ice skaters held a party. My grandfather, a Glaswegian saxophonist who would rather have gone to the pub, was convinced by a comedian on the same bill to come along. My grandmother, another one of the ice skaters, sat down next to him and spilt her drink in his lap. Though she has since denied it, her first words of note to him were ‘Oh no, not another Scot.’

Nobody could have guessed how much would spin off that moment, myself and this book included. Here are a few pictures of them.”

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9780008293208About the Book

This is the story of Ella. And Robert. And of all the things they should have said, but never did.

‘What have you been up to?’
I shrug, ‘Just existing, I guess.’
‘Looks like more than just existing.’
Robert gestures at the baby, the lifeboat, the ocean.
‘All right, not existing. Surviving.’
He laughs, not unkindly. ‘Sounds grim.’
‘It wasn’t so bad, really. But I wish you’d been there.’

Through seven key moments and seven key people their journey intertwines. From the streets of Glasgow during WW2 to the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll of London in the 60s and beyond, this is a story of love and near misses. Of those who come in to our lives and leave it too soon. And of those who stay with you forever…

Format: Hardcover (384 pages)           Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication date: 29th October 2020 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Romance

Find When the Music Stops on Goodreads

Purchase links*
Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops)
*link provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme

My Review

The book’s structure, revisiting seven key moments and people in Ella’s life, was, according to the author, inspired by the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. However, as Joe Heap also writes, “This is a book about music, inspired by music” so cleverly incorporated into the story are the seven modes that have been part of musical notation since ancient times.

In When the Music Stops, each of these modes is represented by a song in a music book Ella acquires when she first takes up the guitar. Although other elements of her memory have faded by the time we first meet her as an old woman – alone, in rather strange circumstances – the tunes are still at her fingertips, evoking memories of significant stages in her life – and the people who shared them with her. As she muses, “There are seven songs. I have to play all of them, though I don’t know what will come at the end. I just have to play them.”

The ability of music to evoke memories is just one of the fascinating concepts explored in the book, along with the nature of memory itself and how we experience the passing of time. I’ll leave others to explain Einstein’s theories on the latter but I liked the metaphor Robert, Ella’s friend since childhood, employs. He compares time to a long-playing record. While you’re listening to the second verse of a song, he explains, the first verse is still there but you’re just not listening to it anymore.

As the reader learns, Ella’s life has been punctuated by moments of loss, often signalled by that thing we’ve probably all come to dread – the unexpected early morning or late night telephone call. Robert’s earlier metaphor is applicable here too. As he confides to Ella about a person they both knew, “I don’t think she’s really gone… I just think we can’t see her anymore.”

Another key theme of the book is that of the missed opportunities in life, especially between people like Ella and Robert. ‘The Road Not Taken’ of Robert Frost’s poem, as it were. Their encounters over the years are populated by falsely reassuring thoughts such as “There will be other chances” and fateful hesitations, “The door of possibility stays open, waiting for her to walk through, but she stays put”.

I admired the way the author recreated the atmosphere of each stage on the journey through Ella’s life, referencing the clothing, the television programmes or even the food of the time: the school playground gift of tablet (a sweet similar to fudge for you non-Scots out there) or a corned beef and pickle sandwich prepared for a picnic.

The standout section for me, entitled ‘The Rebel’, was Ella’s experiences as a session musician in 1960s London, rubbing shoulders with many famous, or soon to be famous, bands of the period. (In his acknowledgements, Joe mentions Carol Kaye, “a trailblazing female musician” who played guitar and bass on many hit records and was the inspiration for Ella.) I also found the section entitled ‘The Matron’ particularly moving.

At one point in the book, a character mentions ‘fantastical thinking’ and I think that’s a great description of the premise of this clever but very touching novel. At the online book launch, Joe Heap mentioned fantasy as making up some of his own early reading – books by authors such as Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – and it’s easy to see that influence in elements of the book. However, more than anything, When the Music Stops is an emotional story of love, loss and the power of the human spirit. I think it would make a great book club choice.

With its gorgeous cover, this is one of those occasions when I feel I’ve slightly missed out by opting for a digital version of a book.  So I may just have to treat myself and help out an independent bookshop through Lockdown 2.0 in the process…

In three words: Imaginative, insightful, heartfelt

Try something similar: Fred’s Funeral by Sandy Day

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Joe Heap Author PicAbout the Author

Joe Heap was born in 1986 and grew up in Bradford, the son of two teachers. His debut novel, The Rules of Seeing, won Best Debut at the Romantic Novel of the Year Awards in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Reader Awards. Joe lives in London with his girlfriend, their two sons and a cat who wishes they would get out of the house more often.

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