Happy publication day to ‘The Good Liars’ – 17th August, 2023.
I loved the sound of this one – a 1920s tale of guilt and ghosts, mystery and murder. Thank you to the lovely people at HQ Stories for my review copy of this book.
This book centres on the Stilwell family of Darkacre Hall – Maurice, his wife Ida, his brother Leonard and long-time family friend Victor. When a policeman arrives at the house following up new information about the disappearance of a boy in 1914, the family (along with new servant, Sarah Hove) find themselves under scrutiny. Events conspire to make the meeting even more prolonged and intense, leading the family to re-evaluate the past and their relationships.
Happy publication day to ‘Adult Assembly Required’!
Having loved Waxman’s first book – ‘The Bookish Life of Nina Hill’ – I was absolutely delighted to be invited on the blog tour for this book. Thanks to Isabelle Wilson at Headline for my spot on the tour and for the review copy of the book – opinions, as always, are my own.
This book is not quite a sequel to Nina Hill, but shares some of the characters from the first book – great news whether you read or didn’t read the previous book because this either works fine as a standalone or you can become reacquainted with some old friends!
I’ll admit that I came to this book with a healthy dose of scepticism. I’m not usually wholly sold on ghost stories – I prefer my sinister goings-on with distinctly human causes!
However, I was won over by this beautifully written tale of eerie occurences on the remote Scottish island of Skelthsea. This truly is a cleverly-plotted and vividly-imagined story with some moments of genuine horror.
Thanks to NetGalley and Orion for my copy of this book for review and my place on the blog tour.
From the Publisher:
We’re best friends. We trust each other. But…
We are all liars.
Allie, Stacie, Diana, Emily and Gail have been by each other’s sides for as long as they can remember. The Fierce Five. Best friends forever. But growing up has meant growing apart. And little white lies have grown into devastating secrets.
When Gail invites the increasingly estranged friends to reunite at her Scottish cabin, it could be the opportunity to mend old wounds and heal the cracks in their friendship. But when a freak snowstorm rocks the cabin and one of the girls is found dead on the ice, their weekend away becomes a race against time – and each other – to get off the mountain alive.
I was contacted by the author to review this novel and she kindly provided my review copy – thank you to Alison Jean Lester for my book, ‘Glide’ coaster and postcard. This has not influenced my review – as always, opinions are my own.
I’ll admit I didn’t fully know what to expect from this novel. I knew it was a study of human relationships, had some psychological drama and also featured photographs alongside the text – all of which intrigued me!
Welcome to my first blog tour post! Today, I want to talk to you about the psychological thriller ‘The Child Who Never Was’ for damppebbles blog tours.
The Blurb:
Her child has been taken. But no-one believes her.
Sarah’s beautiful baby son Oliver has gone missing. And she will do anything – anything – to get him back.
But there’s a problem. Everyone around Sarah, even her beloved identical twin, Evie, tells her she never had a son, that he’s a figment of her imagination, that she’s not well, she needs help.
And on one level, they’re right, Sarah does need support. She has suffered massive trauma in the past and now she’s severely agoraphobic, very rarely leaves the house, avoids all contact with people.
But fragile though she is, Sarah knows deep in her heart that Oliver is real, that the love she feels for him is true.
And that can only mean one thing – someone has been planning this. And now they’ve taken her baby.
The stunning psychological thriller with an ending you won’t see coming. Perfect for fans of K.L Slater, Mark Edwards, Alex Michaelides.
My Review:
Although slightly outside my usual genres, I was intrigued by the premise and had to find out what happened! I love a story with plenty of twists and hoped that this would keep me reading – and it certainly did!
The story opens with Sarah utterly convinced that her toddler, Oliver, has gone missing. She has vivid recollections of giving birth to him, his bedroom, his speech patterns… However, everyone tells her that he never existed and that he is a figment of her imagination. Sarah has mental health challenges after an earlier trauma in her life and now rarely leaves her house, so is Oliver merely a result of this? Sarah is unconvinced and will go to extreme lengths to prove that her child has been taken.
The central characters in the novel, Sarah and Evie, are twins and they are beautifully contrasted. Evie is composed, in charge of the sisters’ architectural business and mother of her own toddler, James, while Sarah is the opposite: struggling with her mental health, bossed around by her sister and childless. It is this sense of opposition that drives the narrative on and the reader is not quite sure where their sympathies should lie for a large proportion of the book. The fact that Sarah is the focal character is especially clever as she is a notoriously unreliable narrator and so the reader is unsure what to believe.
The narrative does have plenty of twists and turns that kept me interested in this story of the two sisters, a lost child and mental health issues. The loss that Sarah feels is convincing and compelling – it is impossible not to feel for her, even as you also have to balance this with her own psychological issues. The opening scene is also – no spoilers – an absolute gem and I was desperate to know how this fitted in with the rest of the story.
Overall, this is a pacey and engaging read. It’s certainly worth clearing the diary for as you will not want to put it down until you know the truth!
About Jane Renshaw:
Jane Renshaw
As a child, Jane spent a lot of time in elaborate Lego worlds populated by tiny plastic animals and people. Crime levels were high, especially after the Dragon brothers set themselves up as vets and started murdering the animals in their ‘care’. (They got away with it by propping the victims up with Plasticine and pretending they were still alive…)
As an adult, she is still playing in imaginary worlds and putting her characters through hell – but now she can call it ‘writing’ and convince herself that she is doing something sensible. In real life, she has a PhD in genetics and copy-edits scientific and medical journals.
Jane is the author of Watch Over Me. THE CHILD WHO NEVER WAS will be her second novel published with Inkubator Books.
