One Day in December – Shari Low

Contemporary Fiction
4*s

Take one day and four strangers; by the time the clock strikes midnight, nothing will be quite the same for any of them again.

I chose this book at a time when I was beginning to appreciate the mixing up of my genres and thought that this sounded much lighter than my normal murder and mayhem, and it was, but please don’t mistake that phrase to mean that it wasn’t just as clever as the most intricate of mystery plots!

The four strangers are Caro, Lila, Cammy and Bernadette – Caro & Lila are in their early thirties, Cammy about a decade older and Bernadette is grandmother, a woman in her fifties. The plot is complex because there is a cast of if not quite thousands, many, many characters, and yet at no point did I feel confused. Even better for those who like an aide memoire, the section before the prologue gives a who’s who guide.

Mel Cairney – The unrequited love of Cammy’s life, now happily married to Josie’s son, Michael, and living in Italy.

One Day in December is told over a twenty-four hour period starting on Saturday 23 December at one minute past midnight and finishing (except for epilogues parts one and two) at a minute past midnight on the same day. As you can imagine the author has lots to fit in with the four strangers present lives and to ensure that their actions make sense, their back stories and the feel of the read is fast and furious which gave rise to plenty heart in the mouth moments.

In short the story is:
Caro sets off on a train to try to track down her Dad to see if what she’s discovered could possibly be true, Lila is busy taking selfies while waiting to drop a bombshell on her married lover’s life, Cammy is planning a proposal against the advice of his closest friends and Bernadette has decided she’s had enough and is leaving her bullying husband of thirty years. 23 December is a definitely a busy day for these four whilst the rest of the world is doing their last-minute Christmas shopping.

With all of that busyness in the storyline you could be forgiven for expecting the characters to be broad brushstrokes on the page but again, Shari Low’s prowess with her pen had me amazed. I cared about several of these characters, despised a couple more and had admiration for others, I laughed with some of the characters and laughed at others and these are not the sort of emotions that can be evoked without having a real feeling of who these people were.

This book is one whose ending deserves a special mention which I alluded to earlier – as all the action happens in twenty-four hours (and two minutes) the finale can only ever take us so far and the two epilogues wrap things up whilst staying true to the book that precedes it.

I raced through this book and sometimes that means that the experience is a little like when you gobble up a sweet dessert but soon forget quite how it tasted; I haven’t forgotten this book though. How could I? It has far too much substance!

I was lucky enough to receive an advance review copy of One Day in December via the publishers, Aria, and this review is my unbiased thanks to them, and the huge talent which is Shari Low. This may be the first book I’ve read by this author but it definitely won’t be my last.

First Published UK: 1 September 2017
Publisher: Aria
No of Pages: 296
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Amazon UK
Amazon US

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph (August 29)

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.

My opening this week comes from One Day in December by Shari Low which will be published on 1 September 2017.

Blurb

By the stroke of midnight, a heart would be broken, a cruel truth revealed, a devastating secret shared, and a love betrayed. Four lives would be changed forever, One Day in December.
One morning in December…

Caro set off on a quest to find out if her relationship with her father had been based on a lifetime of lies.

Lila decided today would be the day that she told her lover’s wife of their secret affair.

Cammy was on the way to pick up the ring for the surprise proposal to the woman he loved.

And Bernadette vowed that this was the day she would walk away from her controlling husband of 30 years and never look back.

One day, four lives on a collision course with destiny… Amazon

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro

Prologue

Saturday 23 December
One minute past midnight

It was nothing like a scene from Grey’s Anatomy.
You know, when the alarms sound, and pagers go off, and the model-esque doctor that was having sex with her unfeasibly gorgeous boss in the on-call room leaps to her feet, all tousled hair and bee-stung lips, pulls on her scrubs, and charges to the rescue, not even stopping to adjust her bra before she saves the day.
Nothing like that at all.
If this were a TV drama, the writers would be told to get back to the drawing board, add a bit of excitement, a touch of jeopardy and perhaps some lascivious underwear, before bringing the scene back to the director.
Because this was… understated.
Just a person. Lying in bed. In a hospital room. Breathing.

I’m really looking forward to reading this book which seems to have the kind of  humour that I enjoy. In fact I had a job to know what to excerpt as each character gets a short bio before the prologue which sets the tone nicely…

Kenneth Manson – eminent cardiac surgeon, controlling husband, cheating arse who has had a an 8-year affair with Lila.

Are you tempted to keep reading?

Weekly Wrap Up (August 6)

With another exceptionally busy week on the work front I decided that I would reinvent myself as a bit of a domestic goddess this weekend, so chose the most important area to keep spick and span, yes you’ve guessed it, the bookcases. I can now confirm that the excel spreadsheet is up to date and complete and there are no longer random piles of books strategically placed throughout the house.

              Bookshelf and cupboard where the TBR lives

I then turned my hand to making some chutney and now have a stack of bramley apple and walnut chutney which tastes divine and should be even better once it has sat a while – if it lasts that long!

This Week on the Blog

The week got off to a cracking start when I took my turn on the blog tour with my review for Death Knocks Twice by Robert Thorogood, the third in the Death in Paradise series.

My extract post was from The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham which was published on 11 July 2017.

This Week in Books featured the authors Agatha Christie, Simon Lelic and Peter Robinson.

On Thursday I published my review of Shelter by Sarah Franklin set in The Forest of Dean (where I grew up) during World War II – I was really taken with this story, the setting was lovingly recreated and the story of the lumberjill’s a piece of history that is a little known one.

I moved further south when I reviewed the seventh book in my 20 Books of Summer challenge, That Girl from Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson

And then I changed continents for my review of the non-fiction book, Midnight in Peking by Paul French. This true crime story not only took me across the world but back in time to 1937 when Pamela Werner was killed and mutilated.

This Time Last Year…

I was reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie the book that is considered by many people as one of the best of the Queen of Crimes books, and I certainly can’t disagree. Poor old Roger Ackroyd was stabbed quite literally in the back, and that was how our narrator, Doctor James Shepard found him in the locked room of his study.

You can read my full review here or click on the book cover below.

Blurb

Agatha Christie’s most daring crime mystery – an early and particularly brilliant outing of Hercule Poirot, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, with its legendary twist, changed the detective fiction genre for ever.

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Now, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

But the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information. Unfortunately, before he could finish the letter, he was stabbed to death… Amazon

Stacking the Shelves

With life here still difficult I decided I needed something a little bit lighter for relief and was approved for One Day in December by Shari Low which seems to fit the bill perfectly.

Blurb

By the stroke of midnight, a heart would be broken, a cruel truth revealed, a devastating secret shared, and a love betrayed. Four lives would be changed forever, One Day in December.
One morning in December…
Caro set off on a quest to find out if her relationship with her father had been based on a lifetime of lies.
Lila decided today would be the day that she told her lover’s wife of their secret affair.
Cammy was on the way to pick up the ring for the surprise proposal to the woman he loved.
And Bernadette vowed that this was the day she would walk away from her controlling husband of 30 years and never look back.

One day, four lives on a collision course with destiny… NetGalley

I made a purchase of Death of a Cuckoo by Wendy Percival which is a short story featuring genealogist Esme Quentin who has her own series…

Blurb

A letter. A photograph. A devastating truth.

When Gina Vincent receives a letter of condolence from a stranger following her mother’s death, a photograph slipped inside reveals a disturbing truth – everything she’s ever known is based on a lie. Shocked and disorientated, she engages genealogy detective Esme Quentin to help search for answers.

The trail leads to an isolated and abandoned property on the edge of Exmoor, once the home of a strict Victorian institution called The House of Mercy and its enigmatic founder, whose influence seems to linger still in the fabric of the derelict building.

As they dig deeper, Esme realises that the house itself hides a dark and chilling secret, one which must be exposed to unravel the mystery behind Gina’s past.

But someone is intent on keeping the secret hidden. Whatever it takes. Amazon

I was also forced to purchase a copy of The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books by Martin Edwards, because Fiction Fan featured this in her Bookish Selfie post last week. I’ve been steadfastly resisting the British Library Crime Classics series as I knew I could easily end up acquiring the whole set and so I fear this book will open the floodgates.

Blurb

The main aim of detective stories is to entertain, but the best cast a light on human behaviour, and display both literary ambition and accomplishment. Even unpretentious detective stories, written for unashamedly commercial reasons, can give us clues to the past, and give us insight into a long-vanished world that, for all its imperfections, continues to fascinate.

This book, written by award-winning crime writer and president of the Detection Club, Martin Edwards, serves as a companion to the British Library’s internationally acclaimed series of Crime Classics. Long-forgotten stories republished in the series have won a devoted new readership, with several titles entering the bestseller charts and sales outstripping those of highly acclaimed contemporary thrillers. Amazon

Since my last post I’ve read 3 books and gained 3 plus I found a couple of books to remove and a few more to add to the spreadsheet!

The current total is therefore 178
Physical Books – 103
Kindle Books – 16
NetGalley Books – 15