I have no idea what it is like for a fiction author on publication day, but it always gives me a frisson of excitement to welcome them to Linda’s Book Bag on the day to chat about their latest book. It’s my absolute pleasure to welcome Chris Malone to stay in with me to tell me about her new thriller out today.

Staying in with Chris Malone

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag Chris and thank you for agreeing to stay in with me. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?

Hello Linda and thank you for the invitation to stay in with you today, a special day for me because it sees the publication of my latest thriller, #stoptheglitch.

The irony is not lost on me that, in order to publish a thriller about loss of the internet, especially at the current time, I am dependent upon the very phenomenon which my protagonist despises.

That’s an intriguing title and I love that irony! What can we expect from an evening in with #stoptheglitch?

Well, Robin, the narrator, is angry. She is fed up with the everyday frustrations of technology, she is appalled at homelessness, and she is desperate to find somewhere quiet where she can think more clearly.

But Robin is by no means an irritating moralistic prig. As Juliet Blaxland says in her review, “It is appealing that the narrator is prepared to admit to being slightly preachy … the tone of ‘moral dissonance’ was pitched just right to engender genuine sympathy with the narrator & the collective dilemmas and paradoxes thrown up by life.” Tensions between order and disorder, anachronistic left and right-wing politics, gender stereotypes and the ethics of individual agency are all explored through the novel.

That sounds incredible. I find books that explore quite challenging issues very compelling.

So, at first. our evening will not necessarily be relaxing, that is, until we reach Caernef camp, in remote Wales. Robin’s dream-escape on a remote Welsh clifftop was conceived from my experience of education outdoor centres. In fact, #stoptheglitch is dedicated to the Hill End Outdoor Centre, near Oxford, ‘a place of possibilities’.

That’s a first for me. I’ve stayed in with authors who dedicate their books to all kind of people but never to an outdoor centre before! Tell me more.

The first time at Caernef, Robin says, ‘It is a very long time since I have been in a place where you cannot hear the human race. There are no traffic noises, no voices, and no hums or buzzes. The distant swell of the sea is calming, and I willingly lapse into a daze, transfixed by the beauty and simplicity of the scene, instinctively remaining silent and still, to blend into the tranquillity.’

But this peace does not last long. When Robin travels back to Oxford just before Christmas, to collect some belongings and see friends, another serious glitch strikes, knocking out phones, power and internet. The cause of this chaos has something to do with Caernef.

Robin is faced with a tantalising dilemma. Should she use her knowledge to try and restore the systems which mankind so relies upon, or should she follow her instincts and deliberately prevent the return to a digital age?

I think #stoptheglitch sounds brilliant.

What else have you brought along and why?

I have brought my #stoptheglitch face mask, to assist our social distancing indoors, and because the book is set in the immediate aftermath of coronavirus. As Juliet Blaxland says, ‘I liked the way #stoptheglitch referred to the pandemic as being in the recent past, as part of a collective memory but not an over-dominant one. The vaguely sinister lurking background presence of the virus added authenticity to the very real idea of internet vulnerability, and the subtle fear of a second wave/glitch.’

That’s a super review and a very impressive mask Chris!

We will listen to Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, because my husband who is a (now ageing) rock guitarist, used to play, and sing it exquisitely. The lyrics sum up the spirit of #stoptheglitch, but this time it is a cyber war. There is also an irony in the title, as I play gently with gender in the book, ever the feminist.

Nothing wrong with a bit of feminism! Did you bring any food?

Sorry to disappoint, but as a severe coeliac, I tend to avoid special food. Instead, we can drink coffee, but in keeping with Robin’s principles, not in throwaway cups.

Most definitely not! I have a feeling I’m going to rather like Robin when I get to read about her Chris. Thanks so much for staying in to tell me all about #stoptheglitch and happy publication day.

#stoptheglitch

In a post-pandemic world, the nation is healing its wounds and trying to get back to a new normal.  But the darker threat of a second wave looms.

Robin hopes to escape society, using an inheritance to secure a peaceful life off grid in Wales. However, through a series of bizarre circumstances, Robin is pulled back into a life left behind, and into a conspiracy where competing gangs challenge assumptions about progress and prosperity.

When the second glitch strikes, knocking out power and communication networks, Robin becomes stranded in Oxford.  Desperate to make it back towards Caernef Camp, Robin recruits three companions and is joined by a mysterious gate-crasher.

Does Robin hold the key to stop the glitch?

Published by Burton Mayers today, 16th October 2020, #stoptheglitch is available for purchase here.

About Chris Malone

Chris achieved a first-class degree through the Open University while raising her family. She then worked as a teacher, a primary school headteacher, and an Ofsted inspector, as well as setting up and managing pre-schools, and leading a further education centre.  In 2000 she was invited to Buckingham Palace to celebrate her contribution to education. Chris then occupied a series of senior management roles in county councils, most recently as Assistant Director for Education in Warwickshire.

Now retired, her debut novel, Zade was published by Austen Macauley in May 2020, closely followed by ‘#stoptheglitch’, published by Burton Mayers Books.

For more information about Chris, visit her website and follow her on Twitter @CMoiraM.

Back in August I was lucky enough to host an extract from This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens in a post you can see here. Since then I have been desperate to read the book and I’m enormously grateful to Rachel Kennedy for sending me a copy of This Time Next Year in return for an honest review and for inviting me to participate in this blog tour.

Published by Penguin imprint Arrow in ebook on 1st August 2020, This Time Next Year is out today in paperback and is available for purchase through the links here.

This Time Next Year

Get ready to fall for this year’s most extraordinary love story

Quinn and Minnie are born on New Year’s Eve, in the same hospital, one minute apart.

Their lives may begin together, but their worlds couldn’t be more different.

Thirty years later they find themselves together again in the same place, at the same time.

What if fate is trying to bring them together?

Maybe it’s time to take a chance on love…

My Review of This Time Next Year

Minnie’s aversion to New Year’s Eve is understandable!

In This Time Next Year I think Sophie Cousens has written exactly what would be requested if a reader sent a list of ingredients for what they wanted in the ultimate romantic story. I loved every moment of finding out about Minnie and Quinn. This Time Next Year is the perfect winter book. It warms the heart and soul of the reader and puts a smile on their face. It’s sheer escapism, mixed with a dash of reality and an added, impossible to define, sparkle that is just wonderful.

There’s a witty and effervescent plot that races along, mainly from Minnie’s perspective, so that she becomes incredibly real to the reader. I was absolutely desperate for her to have a happy ending to her story and feared the tantalising relationship she has with Quinn might not work (in spite of the owls!) until I was beside myself wanting to race through the story to find out what happened, whilst simultaneously not wanting my enjoyment in the book to be over. I thought Minnie’s friendship with Leila was sensitively and realistically handled by Sophie Cousens and the author’s depth of understanding of what makes us who we are, particularly with regard to Quinn and Tara, was pitch perfect. I rather feel I’m a little bit in love with Quinn myself. I adored the natural dialogue because it added to the humour and uncovered character brilliantly. Sophie Cousens writes with a visual filmic quality that would make This Time Next Year a sublime Christmas romcom film.

Alongside a fast pace, humour, plenty of action and cracking characters, This Time Next Year is a narrative with conscience. By all means read and enjoy it as pure entertainment of the most engaging kind, but looking just below the surface, Sophie Cousens explores many themes that will resonate with so many readers at a much more profound level too. Mental health, friendship, family, loyalty, commercialism and community, conformity and difference make This Time Next Year a compelling book to believe in as well as to be diverted by.

I thought This Time Next Year was absolutely wonderful. It brought the occasional tear to my eye but it made me laugh too. Reading This Time Next Year made me completely happy because of Sophie Cousens’s skilled narrative style. What could be better than that? Don’t miss this gorgeous, heart warming read.

About Sophie Cousens

Sophie Cousens worked in TV in London for over twelve years, producing The Graham Norton Show, Big Brother and Ant and Dec. Sophie has previously published an eBook only romantic comedy novel How To Get Ahead In Television which was shortlisted for the 2015 Romantic Novelist Association Awards. She relocated from London to Jersey and balances her writing career with working for an arts charity, taking care of her two small children and enjoying small island life.

You can follow Sophie on Twitter @SophieCous.

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It’s an absolute pleasure to be joining the blog tour for Linn B. Halton’s latest book Coming Home to Penvennan Cove. I’d like to thank Victoria Joss at Aria for inviting me to take part. Linn has featured on Linda’s Book Bag before with a super guest post about paperback reading that you’ll find here and I was delighted to host an extract from A Little Sugar, A Lot of Love here too. Today Linn stays in with me to discuss her new book.

Staying in with Linn B. Halton

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag Linn and thank you for agreeing to stay in with me.

Ah, my pleasure, Linda – sending a virtual hug! x

Thank you! So, tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?

Coming Home to Penvennan Cove, the first in a three-book series—which is a first for me! What is exciting is that as I’m about to sit down and begin writing book number two, I have no idea where the characters are going to take the story. And that’s what keeps me writing.

It must be exciting and daunting in equal measure I think! Before you write book two, what can we expect from an evening in with Coming Home to Penvennan Cove?

Aside from some bracing walks along the beach and the eerie sound of the seagulls circling overhead…

Actually, I love that already! Tell me more.

The ideas for my stories all begin with a one-liner that pops into my head, is jotted down, and then filed away. Kerra Shaw was unnamed at that stage, but her words puzzled me: ‘If you leave home because you don’t fit in, what happens when you achieve your dream but still feel that something is missing? And then fate leads you back home…’

The heart of this story is about the way that life, love, and relationships impact upon the journey we each take. Kerra thought that having a successful career would make her feel more self-assured and she’d no longer have anything to prove to herself, or to other people. Instead, she’s becoming a chameleon and feeling the need to blend in. As a people watcher, it’s something I’ve often noticed and as Kerra tells her story I’m fascinated to see where it goes. And it’s made me think about whether there is a little bit of a chameleon trait inside of me… and if that is a good thing, or a bad thing? I guess I’ll find out by the time I get to the end of the series. That’s what I love about writing—it often throws up issues that change the way I look at things. And I like that.

Absolutely. I really enjoy books that make me question myself. I think we might all have a bit of the chameleon about us Linn!

What else have you brought along and why?

People tend to flock to Cornwall in the summer months, but I prefer the quieter seasons. And here are the photos that inspire me to keep going back! The best kedgeree I’ve ever been served for breakfast was at Rick Stein’s restaurant in Padstow. A-maz-ing!

These photos make me desperate to get back to Cornwall. I think I’d better get reading Coming Home to Penvennan Cove pretty quickly.

The tall ships in Charlestown remind me of Poldark and Aidan Turner. I always return home and start re-watching old episodes.

The tiny, shingle coves and the harboursides are dramatic in winter and bustling in summer. Nothing beats a walk along the shoreline, no matter what the weather is doing.

I agree. We’ve just bought a motorhome so that we can escape to the coast socially distanced as often as possible.

The truth is that my love for Cornwall began when I was a child on our annual holiday and whenever I return it conjures up old memories, as I create new ones…

In the end Linn, memories are all we have. I love the sound of Coming Home to Penvennan Cove so thank you so much for staying in with me to tell me all about it.

Coming Home to Penvennan Cove

Can Kerra’s Cornish hometown offer the fresh start she needs?

When Kerra left the quiet Cornish town of Penvennan Cove for the bright lights of London she didn’t look back. But after the death of her mother, she’s decided it’s time to face her past and return to the place she called home. Her father needs her, and perhaps she needs him more than she’s willing to admit?

Tackling town gossip, home renovations and a flame from her past, it’s not quite smooth sailing for Kerra. Ross is the bad boy she was meant to forget, not a man who still sets her heart aflutter. As he helps bring her dream home to life, they begin to break down the barriers that have been holding them back and in the process learn things about themselves they never thought possible.

As friends old and new come together, the future in Penvennan looks bright.

Perfect for fans of Milly Johnson, Phillipa Ashley and Julie Houston.

Published by Aria on 8th October 2020, Coming Home to Penvennan Cove is available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Google Play and iBooks.

About Linn B. Halton

From interior designer to author, when Linn B. Halton’s not writing, or spending time with the family, she’s either upcycling furniture or working in the garden. Linn won the 2013 UK Festival of Romance: Innovation in Romantic Fiction award; her novels have been short-listed in the UK’s Festival of Romance and the eFestival of Words Book Awards. Living in Coed Duon in the Welsh Valleys with her ‘rock’, Lawrence, and gorgeous Bengal cat Ziggy, she freely admits she’s an eternal romantic. Linn is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Society of Authors. Linn writes feel-good, uplifting novels about life, love and relationships.

For more information about Linn, follow her on Twitter @LinnBHalton, find her on Facebook or visit her website. There’s more with these other bloggers too:

The Salt Path

There’s an irony that the first book available since lockdown for the U3A Book Group to which I belong is my choice along with another member and I can’t make our Zoom discussions for it! The Salt Path has been a book I’ve wanted to read since it was first published in 2018 because I’d heard such wonderful things about it. I’ll just have to share my thoughts here by way of a review.

Published by Penguin, The Salt Path is available for purchase through the links here.

The Salt Path

Just days after Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years, is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.

Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.

My Review of The Salt Path

Ray and Moth find their lives dramatically altered by circumstance.

My word. What a book. It’s going to be tricky to review The Salt Path because it’s a book rather unlike any other I’ve read. Part memoir, part history, travelogue or gazetteer The Salt Path is a blend of glorious description, medical insight and a true tale of humanity at its most basic and sublime in equal measure. It is also an intimate portrait of a marriage where love overrides everything else. What I so enjoyed too was that even though catalyst for the book arises out of momentous adversity, there’s still humour and positivity to be had. The ongoing theme of Moth being mistaken for Simon Armitage, for example, made me smile every time he was mentioned. Indeed, I loved every single syllable of this book.

Reading The Salt Path took me vicariously as far from my comfort zone as it is possible to be as I experienced Raynor Winn’s life so completely. The descriptive quality of her writing is quite wonderful so that I felt the sting of the wind, rain and salt on her journey with Moth. Familiar with the area Ray writes about, it felt to me as if I were with them both every step of the way, whilst at the same time I couldn’t imagine how I might have responded to life’s events had I been Ray. This is skilled writing indeed because it draws in the reader and compels them to read on even when they may be wary of the content based around Moth’s illness. I felt Raynor Winn’s depiction of nature had the quality of Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poetry as she painted a vivid image of the weather, the birds and animals, and the characteristics of the path she was taking, both literally and metaphorically. I was mesmerised.

The people Ray and Moth encounter as they walk are a striking cross-section of society and I found my attitude towards those who find themselves homeless sharpening and clarifying as I read. I think Raynor Winn has managed to make me a more thoughtful and understanding person through my reading – not just of those I meet and interact with, but of myself too.

Underpinning the journey is a depth of emotion I found incredibly affecting. There’s overwhelming grief and loss but, equally, uplifting joy and hope, so that reading The Salt Path made me reflect on my own life, what I’ve achieved and what I might still like to do. I have a feeling it is one of the most personally influential books I’ve read. I found The Salt Path an almost hypnotic read that drew me in until the last moment and held my attention unwaveringly. I loved it and am desperate to know what happened next for Ray and Moth.

About Raynor Winn

Since travelling the South West Coastal Path, Raynor Winn has become a regular long-distance walker and writes about nature, homelessness and wild camping. She lives in Cornwall. The Salt Path was her first book and became a Sunday Times bestseller in hardback and paperback. It was shortlisted for numerous prizes including the Costa, the Wainwright and the Stanfords Travel Writing awards.

You can follow Raynor on Twitter @raynor_winn. You’ll also find her on Instagram.

I have quite a bit going on in my life at the moment and had intended to take a complete 10 day break from blogging, but when I heard that Love Books Group was holding a one day blog blitz for lovely Clare Flynn’s brand new book, A Painter in Penang, I knew I had to participate. Clare was last on the Linda’s Book Bag earlier in the year when she was celebrating The Pearl of Penang‘s publication. You can read what happened on that occasion here.

Having stayed in with me to chat about The Alien Corn in a post you can see here, Clare also featured on the blog when she wrote a fabulous guest post about the North South divide when The Green Ribbons was published. You can see that post here.

Clare’s A Painter in Penang was published on 6th October 2020 and is available for purchase here.

A Painter in Penang

Sixteen-year-old Jasmine Barrington hates everything about living in Kenya and longs to return to the island of Penang in British colonial Malaya where she was born. Expulsion from her Nairobi convent school offers a welcome escape – the chance to stay with her parents’ friends, Mary and Reggie Hyde-Underwood on their Penang rubber estate.

But this is 1948 and communist insurgents are embarking on a reign of terror in what becomes the Malayan Emergency. Jasmine unearths a shocking secret as her own life is put in danger. Throughout the turmoil, her one constant is her passion for painting.

From the international best-selling and award-winning author of The Pearl of Penang, this is a dramatic coming of age story, set against the backdrop of a tropical paradise torn apart by civil war.

*

I miss travel so much and having been through Nairobi several times and having been to Penang relatively recently I have a feeling that A Painter in Penang might be just teh book to transport me back!

About Clare Flynn

Historical novelist Clare Flynn is a former global marketing director and business owner. She now lives in Eastbourne on the south coast of England and most of her time these days is spent writing her novels – when she’s not gazing out of her windows at the sea.

Clare is the author of eleven novels and a short story collection. Her books deal with displacement – her characters are wrenched away from their comfortable existences and forced to face new challenges – often in outposts of an empire which largely disappeared after WW2.

Clare’s novels often feature places she knows well and she does extensive research to build the period and geographic flavour of her books. A Greater World – 1920s Australia; Kurinji Flowers – pre-Independence India; Letters from a Patchwork Quilt – nineteenth century industrial England and the USA; The Green Ribbons – the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century in rural England, The Chalky Sea – World War II England (and Canada) and its sequels The Alien Corn and The Frozen River – post WW2 Canada. She has also published a collection of short stories – both historical and contemporary, A Fine Pair of Shoes and Other Stories.

Fluent in Italian, she loves spending time in Italy. In her spare time she likes to quilt, paint and travel as often and as widely as possible. She is an active member of the Historical Novel Society, the Romantic Novelists Association, The Society of Authors, NINC and the Alliance of Independent Authors.

For more information about Clare, visit her website, where you will find a free copy of Clare’s exclusive short story collection, A Fine Pair of Shoes, follow her on Twitter @clarefly and find her on Facebook.

I can’t believe it’s two and a half years since Dan Klefstad featured on Linda’s Book Bag. Then I interviewed Dan about his first novel, Shepherd and the Professor. You can read that interview here. Dan’s latest book, Fiona’s Guardians, is out today and I’m delighted he has allowed me to feature an extract from the beginning of the book.

Published today, 2nd October 2020, Fiona’s Guardians is available for purchase here.

Fiona’s Guardians

When a vampire seduces you, death is minutes away. When she hires you, you’ll soon wish you were dead.

It’s a truth known to every guardian who worked for Fiona, including Daniel. Aside from managing the day to day chores and keeping her protected, he manages an investment portfolio to buy stolen blood from hospital workers. The 250-year-old Fiona needs 10 pints of human blood every night. As a result of this, Daniel and Fiona are always on the lookout for police, but fail to notice their gradual encirclement by Mors Strigae, an ancient order of monks dedicated to the extermination of vampires. Gone for a century, the monks start a new war when they destroy Fiona’s sire. This time, her vampire family is pushed to the edge of extinction — and the humans who serve them are hunted and executed.

After 35 years, what keeps him loyal? And will he ever be allowed to leave?

An Extract from Fiona’s Guardians

MESSAGE FROM FIONA

Hello mortal. I’m touched by your interest in those who work for me and those who used to. A handful truly deserve to be remembered in a book that never goes out of print. Their loyalty and talent are the reason I’ve existed for two and a half centuries. A few, however, earned the painful and premature deaths detailed in these pages. For me, loyalty comes first and must be constant. That’s not to say a partnership with me can’t end in mutual agreement. It just never happened before. Still, I may allow my current guardian to retire. After serving longer than any other, he might well live his remaining years in a manner of his choosing. This would create an opportunity for another to earn his substantial salary and benefits. But a warning is in order: The work is as relentless and unsparing as my hunger, and everyone I employed has murdered at least once on my behalf. Not that this is the preferred option. There are other, less extreme ways to obtain blood for me, and Daniel built a robust network that can be handed off to a successor. He’s in the car now, looking at his watch, wondering when we can go home to his decanter of scotch. From what I see, nothing in your cabinet would satisfy him so, rest assured, I won’t leave with any of your bottles.

I see you’ve been reading job postings. Do not ask if I offer a retirement plan. In truth, I’ve never understood the concept. Each evening I awake knowing I’m the chief executive for extending my life, so ceasing work would amount to suicide. But this is what Daniel wants, and I owe him for that time he saved me from dying. It’s in the book.

My favorite chapters feature Agripina, the one who created me. Driven by hunger, she brought me to the edge of death but changed her mind when I started turning blue. She claimed she saw something worth preserving: a simple, unselfish nature that disappeared when she opened a vein for me. Since that moment, the only feeling I’ve known, besides adoration for her, is a craving that never ceases. That is, until the instant I tasted regret – the perpetual pain of guilt — at not being with her when our enemies reappeared. They’re in here, too. And so is my revenge.

Go ahead, indulge your curiosity. When you finish reading, I’ll visit again and make myself visible. You’ll find me sitting in that chair over there, and we can talk about your future.

Until then,
F. 

*

I don’t know about you, but I find that really creepy. If you’d like to see Dan read from the opening of Fiona’s Guardians click here.

About Dan Klefstad

Dan Klefstad is a writer and broadcaster. He works on WNIJ providing the latest news, weather and other information, with the goal of seamlessly weaving this content into NPR’s Morning Edition.

Dan is especially interested in literature from the WNIJ area, and interviews writers for Morning Edition and records them reading excerpts.

You can follow Dan on Twitter @danklefstad and find him on Facebook. You’ll find much more on Dan’s YouTube channel here.

My enormous thanks to Isabel Smith at Harper Collins for inviting me to be part of the launch celebrations for Louise Jensen’s The Stolen Sisters and for sending me a copy of the book in return for an honest review.

Louise is a very welcome author on Linda’s Book Bag and has featured here several times. Most recently I stayed in with Louise writing under her pseudonym Amelia Henley to celebrate the publication of The Life We Almost Had in a post you can read here. I also reviewed The Life We Almost Had here.

I reviewed Louise’s The Family here and it was one of my books of the year last year.

The Stolen Sisters is published today, 1st October 2020, by Harper Collins imprint HQ and is available for purchase through the links here.

The Stolen Sisters

Sisterhood binds them. Trauma defines them. Will secrets tear them apart?

Leah’s perfect marriage isn’t what it seems but the biggest lie of all is that she’s learned to live with what happened all those years ago. Marie drinks a bit too much to help her forget. And Carly has never forgiven herself for not keeping them safe.

Twenty years ago the Sinclair sisters were taken. But what came after their return was far worse. Can a family ever recover, especially when not everyone is telling the truth…?

My Review of The Stolen Sisters

Childhood experiences affect adult lives.

Oh my word! I so enjoyed The Stolen Sisters. It’s an absolute corker of a read that I simply couldn’t tear myself away from.

At the beginning I wasn’t sure I’d appreciate a narrative that had three sister perspectives as well as George’s because I often find I need to concentrate too hard to follow multiple voices. However, such is the skill of Louise Jensen’s writing that I had no difficulty in not just following, but relishing immensely, the interweaving narratives. Indeed, I thought Louise Jensen’s plotting in The Stolen Sisters was magnificent. It’s a real masterclass for all aspiring thriller writers and thoroughly exciting for readers. The then and now structure, and the different character perspectives, all add up to a roller-coaster read that I found completely mesmerising. With some chapters only a few lines long, the pace is dramatic and I lost count of the number of times my reader expectations were inverted or confounded so that I found myself exclaiming aloud. Frequently my heart was thumping as the tension mounted. Each chapter ends dramatically so that I had no autonomy over my responses. I simply had to read on.

The Sinclair sisters are clear and distinct characters in spite of Leah and Marie being twins. I thought the way their shared experience affected then differently was utterly brilliant and the manner in which Louise Jensen uncovers the reasons for their differences is genius. I can’t explain more because that would be to give plot spoilers but I would say that readers should be prepared to be jolted out of their beliefs and to discover new things as they read.

Aside from a being a brilliant, fast paced thriller, The Stolen Sisters is a humane and sensitive insight into families, relationships, guilt, mental health, love and fear so that it is a multi-layered and wonderfully textured read. Louise Jensen presents both the prosaic and the unusual in tandem, and weaves a narrative that is compelling, affecting and riveting. There are elements that readers will recognise as well as aspects they may never have heard of before. Again, I don’t want to explain too much as it will spoil the read, but I felt I understood Carly, Leah, Marie and George perfectly by the end.

I realise that this review of The Stolen Sisters is somewhat inadequate and vague, but I really don’t want to undermine any other readers’ enjoyment and entertainment by saying too much. For me the novel was the perfect blend of threat, emotion, resolution and understanding. Louise Jensen is fast becoming one of my favourite writers because not only does she produce fiction with immense skill, she does so with heart and soul too. I thought The Stolen Sisters was superb. I loved every moment of reading it and cannot recommend it highly enough.

About Louise Jensen

Louise Jensen has sold over a million English language copies of her International No. 1 psychological thrillers The Sister, The Gift, The Surrogate, The Date and The Family. Her novels have also been translated into twenty-five languages, as well as featuring on the USA Today and Wall Street Journal Bestseller’s List. Louise’s sixth thriller, The Stolen Sisters is published on 1st October by Harper Collins.

The Sister was nominated for the Goodreads Debut of 2016 Award. The Date was nominated for The Guardian’s ‘Not The Booker’ Prize 2018. The Surrogate has been nominated for the best Polish thriller of 2018. The Gift has been optioned for a TV film.

Louise lives with her husband, children, madcap dog and a rather naughty cat in Northamptonshire. She loves to hear from readers and writers.

You can find out more by visiting Louise’s website, finding her on Facebook and following her on Twitter @Fab_fiction.

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