The Long Fall – Julia Crouch

Psychological Thriller
4*’s

If you are looking for the perfect holiday read then this may just be it. Julia Crouch takes her readers on a journey to the island of Ikaria, taking in France and Athens on the way and the descriptions of the adventure Emma James is embarking on is extremely evocative especially with an adults perspective of what lone travelling can mean when everything you need has to be carted from one grotty hostel to the next. Set in 1981 Emma James is travelling alone, full of the bravado that only a sheltered eighteen year old can possess, especially when that young girl is determined to leave the northern town of Ripon behind, along with her boring parents and have an adventure before going to University with a tale to tell. Sadly the trip isn’t quite what she dreamed of and the events are set to change her life forever.

In the present Kate is the ‘Face of Kindness’ having set up a charity to help young girls in Africa, a charity born out of despair following the death of her young daughter Martha. Having conquered her fear of flying to visit a newly opened school she is back at home with her hedge fund manager husband Mark and teenage daughter Tilly. When Tilly announces she wants to go travelling Kate’s tenuous grip on normality begins to unravel but worse is still to come, a bit of her past comes bounding back into her life and choices must be made.

I love books that flip backwards and forwards through time particularly when the past is in the form of journal entries, and this one has the added distinction of the past being set during a trip where the life’s normal boundaries are different. I felt I was there with Emma, drinking at the tavern, sleeping on the roof and meeting new people feeling that she was following in the footsteps of her favourite writers. The spell was only momentarily broken when modern phrases crept into the journal that weren’t exactly authentic to the time it was set in, but I was able to forgive this and favour instead, the fast-moving plot and maternal feelings I felt for the young Emma, alone and unsure in a foreign land.

To enjoy this book you do have to leave some logic behind especially in relation to some of Kate’s decisions and I have to admit I guessed most of the outcome but I wasn’t quite sure enough that it spoilt my enjoyment of this fast-paced and disturbing book.

I was delighted to receive a free copy of this book from the publishers Headline ahead of the publication date of 19 June 2014 as I have read all this author’s previous novels.

Cuckoo – Psychological thriller set in the domestic setting. Polly comes to stay with Rose and her family and doesn’t seem to want to leave but not before strange things start happening.

Every Vow You Break – I wasn’t as convinced by this story with its setting New York. Marcus and Laura decide that a break will hep their marriage so travel with him while he works on a play.

Tarnished – An outstanding read which I was absorbed and repulsed by in equal measure. Read my review here

Friday Finds (March 7)

Hosted by Should be Reading

FRIDAY FINDS showcases the books you ‘found’ and added to your To Be Read (TBR) list… whether you found them online, or in a bookstore, or in the library — wherever! (they aren’t necessarily books you purchased).

So, come on — share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

This week I have just one addition from NetGalley, and this is one from an author who I’ve read all their previous books, The Long Fall by Julia Crouch

Blurb

How far would you go to protect your secrets?
Greece, 1980
Emma takes part in a shattering, violent event. An event to which she is anything but an innocent bystander.
She is only eighteen, but this marks her fall from innocence.
It will haunt her for the rest of her life.
London, now
Kate has the perfect existence: a glossy image, a glamorous home, a perfect family.
But there are cracks.
All is not what it seems.
And now the two worlds are about to collide.
Somebody’s out for revenge.
Someone who has been waiting thirty years… NetGalley

And showing an unseen amount of self-control, no new books have made their way into my house this week! I have however, seen a few good books that I have added to the TBR.

From Fleur In Her World I came across The Lie Of You by Jane Lythell

Blurb

Can you hide your deepest fear?
To the outside world, Kathy is the very picture of a happy and fulfilled modern woman. She has a beautiful baby boy, a clever, handsome husband and a glamorous, high-powered job.
But not everybody is fooled. Her employee, Heja, knows the truth: the cracks in Kathy’s marriage, her self-doubt, her fear of failure at work. Heja is perfectly placed to destroy Kathy’s life. And if she succeeds, she can claim the one thing she wants most…GoodReads

See Fleur’s review here

A kind visitor to my blog L has recommended the following book; Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann

Blurb

Nick and her cousin, Helena, have grown up sharing sultry summer heat, sunbleached boat docks, and midnight gin parties on Martha’s Vineyard in a glorious old family estate known as Tiger House. In the days following the end of the Second World War, the world seems to offer itself up, and the two women are on the cusp of their ‘real lives’: Helena is off to Hollywood and a new marriage, while Nick is heading for a reunion with her own young husband, Hughes, about to return from the war.
Soon the gilt begins to crack. Helena’s husband is not the man he seemed to be, and Hughes has returned from the war distant, his inner light curtained over. On the brink of the 1960s, back at Tiger House, Nick and Helena—with their children, Daisy and Ed—try to recapture that sense of possibility. But when Daisy and Ed discover the victim of a brutal murder, the intrusion of violence causes everything to unravel. The members of the family spin out of their prescribed orbits, secrets come to light, and nothing about their lives will ever be the same. Goodreads

Lastly Bilbliophile By The Sea featured the following book on her blog; You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz  and to me this sounds like the perfect read.

Blurb

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to examine their first impressions of men for signs of serious trouble later on. But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disast and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

My last book that I have added to the TBR was found on Crime Fiction Lover’s blog Never Look Back by Clare Donoghue.

This is another book that deals with stalking to add to my other recent reads on this subject, The Book Of You by Claire Kendall and Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott

Blurb

Three women have been found brutally murdered in south London, the victims only feet away from help during each sadistic attack. And the killer is getting braver . . .
Sarah Grainger is rapidly becoming too afraid to leave her house. Once an outgoing photographer, she knows that someone is watching her. A cryptic note brings everything into terrifying focus, but it’s the chilling phone calls that take the case to another level.
DI Mike Lockyer heads up the regional murder squad. With three bodies on his watch, and a killer growing in confidence, he frantically tries to find the link between these seemingly isolated incidents. What he discovers will not only test him professionally but will throw his personal life into turmoil too.
I’d love to know what you have all found this week….Goodreads