I’m delighted to be part of the blog tour for You Belong To Me by Mark Tilbury and would like to thank Mark and Emma Whelton at Bloodhound Books for inviting me to participate. This is one of the tours I agreed to before I decided on my tour ‘sabbatical’ and I’m so pleased to be taking part.

I have previously reviewed Marks The Abattoir of Dreams here and it became one of my books of the year in 2017 in a post you can read here. I was lucky enough to interview Mark when The Liar’s Promise was published (here) and Mark stayed in with me here on the blog more recently to chat about The Abattoir of Dreams.

Published by Bloodhound Books, You Belong To Me is available for purchase here.

You Belong To Me

Can two wrongs ever make a right?

The police never found fifteen-year-old Ellie Hutton. She vanished ten years ago after walking home from school along a disused railway track. But Danny Sheppard knows exactly what happened to her. She is dead and buried in a field near Lassiter’s Brook.

Now Cassie Rafferty has gone missing. Same age. Similar circumstances. And Danny also knows what has happened to her.

Can Danny fight his demons and tell the truth this time?

Or will history repeat itself and leave another innocent girl dead?

My Review of You Belong To Me

When school girl Cassie Rafferty goes missing it looks as if the past is going to catch up with the present.

Oh my goodness. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed Mark Tilbury’s You Belong To Me because it made me feel very disturbed and uncomfortable, but my goodness it’s a powerful read.

It’s tricky to say too much about the plot without spoiling the reading experience for others, but the three part structure works so well, especially with the theme of retribution and Keiran’s religious beliefs weaving through so that I kept thinking of the holy trinity and ethics in general. I found the middle section, dealing with the boys in the past, brutal and savage because of the realistic dialogue and the escalating violence of Calum. It was so effectively written that I had to keep giving myself a breather as I read to recover. I loved the way the narrative was resolved at the end.

What made me so disquieted about reading You Belong To Me was the way it made me question my own morality. Danny’s desire to outwit his evil brother Calum steps beyond what might be called acceptable behaviour, but I was with him all the way. I felt almost complicit in his actions and that didn’t make for an easy feeling. Mark Tilbury has an incredible knack of getting inside the very soul of a character, especially one like Calum, and making the reader understand them entirely. I found myself contemplating whether humans have the capacity to be born evil or whether Calum was simply incredibly ill. I’m not sure I know the answer even after reading You Belong To Me and I still don’t know if I would have gone along with Danny and the others.

As well as my helpless fascination with the character of Calum, I thought the four younger boys, Danny, Rob, Josh and Keiran were entirely realistic too. Their naive boasting, their bravado and the way in which they are affected by events seemed utterly believable and actually, terribly sad. Although I didn’t always like some of their language and attitudes, I have taught enough youngsters from challenging backgrounds to appreciate just how accurate a picture these parts of the narrative are.

You Belong To Me isn’t a book I will forget in a hurry and I’m beginning to find that this is characteristic of Mark Tilbury’s writing. He has the capacity to present the most barbarous actions utterly convincingly and to make the reader wonder ‘What if?’. I find this compelling and terrifying in equal measure. What a read!

About Mark Tilbury

Mark lives in a small village in the lovely county of Cumbria, although his books are set in Oxfordshire where he was born and raised.

After serving in the Royal Navy and raising his two daughters after being widowed, Mark finally took the plunge and self-published two books on Amazon, The Revelation Room and The Eyes of the Accused.

When he’s not writing, Mark can be found trying and failing to master blues guitar, and taking walks around the beautiful county of Cumbria.

You can follow Mark on Twitter @MTilburyAuthor, visit his website and find him on Facebook.

My enormous thanks to Lucy at Legend Press for a copy of The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore by Kim Fu in return for an honest review.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore will be published by Legend Press on 15th February 2019 and is available for purchase here.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

A group of young girls descend on a sleepaway camp where their days are filled with swimming lessons, friendship bracelets, and songs by the fire. Filled with excitement and nervous energy, they set off on an overnight kayaking trip to a nearby island.

But before the night is over, they find themselves stranded, with no adults to help them survive or guide them home.

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore traces these five girls through and beyond this fateful trip. We see them through successes and failures, loving relationships and heartbreaks; we see what it means to find, and define, oneself, and the ways in which the same experience is refracted through different people.

A portrait of friendship and of the families we build for ourselves, and the pasts we can’t escape.

My Review of The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

Five girls head with their group leader out on an overnight trip whilst at summer camp.

What an intelligent and beautifully crafted novel this is. Initially the title made me think it might be a twee representation of American summer camps, but I was completely wrong. The entire structure and premise of The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore works on so many levels that I think it would reward multiple reads. The girls do get physically lost on their trip but the book is about so much more in terms of their losses over their lives. Each of the five experiences a loss in a relationship, or of identity, or friendship or self-worth so that there are multiple resonances that any readers could relate to.

However, what I found most fascinating of all the losses in The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore was the speed with which the girls become quite savage and almost feral as their individual need for survival takes over their behaviour and they lose the constraints of upbringing and society. Frequently I was reminded of Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but with less violence and a more realistic and accessible scenario that somehow made this book all the more shocking, believable and affecting.

I loved the way the initial story of the girls on their overnight camp underpins the accounts of their earlier and later lives. Reading The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore was akin to looking at a kaleidoscope because all the girls have their own perception of what happened and how they behaved or were treated. Accounts shift and refract depending on which character is the focus of the writing, so that patterns change and alter, providing considerable food for thought. Kim Fu has written a raw and compelling insight into how we create ourselves as individuals that is mesmerising and actually very poignant.

It’s tricky to comment on the plot but I will say that the plot structure is a work of art in itself. Melding past and present events substantiates the characters of the five girls so that somehow they seem more real, more flawed and more human. The settings and descriptions bring a cinematic intensity to the story.

Kim Fu is a highly skilled writer and I found The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore had quite a profound effect on me, creating quite conflicting emotions at times. For example, I felt contempt for Dina’s obsession with appearance and celebrity and yet simultaneously I felt profound sadness on her behalf too because Kim Fu’s wonderful writing made me understand Dina completely.

It’s hard to define The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore. It’s certainly superb literary fiction. It could almost be read as a young adult text and yet it embodies a wisdom and understanding of humanity that it ageless and timeless. I found it touching, thought-provoking and fascinating. I really recommend it.

About Kim Fu

Kim Fu is a Canadian-born writer, living in Seattle, Washington. Kim Fu’s writing has appeared in Granta, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Hazlitt, and the Times Literary Supplement.

You can follow Kim on Twitter @skimfu. There’s more information on her website.

I know, I know. I’m not supposed to be taking on anything new for the blog at the moment, but when one of the loveliest and most hard working people I know has the cover of their very first book revealed today I simply had to join in. I’m even more excited as another friend, blog tour organiser Rachel of Rachel’s Random Resources, asked me to participate as a surprise for Kim.

I’m thrilled to bring you Amazing Grace by Kim Nash. As well as being a friend, Kim is a fantastic publicist and someone whose work in the publishing world I respect completely. It gives me enormous pleasure to be part of her publishing journey with today’s reveal and I’ll be reviewing Amazing Grace later too.

Let’s find out about Amazing Grace.

Amazing Grace

She’s taking her life back, one step at a time…

Grace thought she had it all. Living in the beautiful village of Little Ollington, along with head teacher husband Mark and gorgeous son, Archie, she devoted herself to being the perfect mum and the perfect wife, her little family giving her everything she ever wanted.

Until that fateful day when she walked in on Mark kissing his secretary – and her perfect life fell apart.

Now she’s a single mum to Archie, trying to find her way in life and keep things together for his sake. Saturday nights consist of a Chinese takeaway eaten in front of the TV clad in greying pyjamas, and she can’t remember the last time she had a kiss from anyone aside from her dog, Becks…

Grace’s life needs a shake up – fast. So when gorgeous gardener Vinnie turns up on her doorstep, his twinkling eyes suggesting that he might be interested in more than just her conifers, she might just have found the answer to her prayers. But as Grace falls deeper for Vinnie, ten-year-old Archie fears that his mum finding love means she’ll never reconcile with the dad he loves.

So when ex-husband Mark begs her for another chance, telling her he’s changed from the man that broke her heart, Grace finds herself with an impossible dilemma. Should she take back Mark and reunite the family that Archie loves? Or risk it all for a new chance of happiness?

A funny, feel good romance about finding your own path and changing your life for the better – readers of Cathy Bramley, Jill Mansell and Josie Silver will love this uplifting read.

Doesn’t that sound a smashing read just right for spring?

Published by Hera on 10th April 2019, Amazing Grace by Kim Nash is available for pre-order on Kobo, Apple, Amazon UK and Amazon US.

About Kim Nash

Kim Nash lives in Staffordshire with son Ollie and English Setter Roni, is PR & Social Media Manager for Bookouture and is a book blogger at Kim The Bookworm.

Kim won the Romantic Novelists Association’s Media Star of the Year in 2016, which she still can’t quite believe. She is now quite delighted to be a member of the RNA.

When she’s not working or writing, Kim can be found walking her dog, reading, standing on the sidelines of a football pitch cheering on Ollie and binge watching box sets on the TV. She’s also quite partial to a spa day and a gin and tonic (not at the same time!) Kim also runs a book club in Cannock, Staffs.

Amazing Grace is her debut novel with Hera Books and will be out on 10th April 2019.

You can find out more by finding Kim on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @KimTheBookworm.