22

My very grateful thanks to Aoifke McGuire at Penguin for sending me a copy of The Winter Runaway by Katie Flynn in return for an honest review. It’s my pleasure to share that review today.

The Winter Runaway is published by Penguin in paperback on 24th October 2024 and is available for purchase through the publisher links here.

The Winter Runaway

Tammy and her mother, Grace, are desperate to escape Tammy’s violent bully of a father. But when an unforeseen tragedy strikes, mother and daughter must flee Scotland in the dead of night.

To survive the severest of penalties, they leave behind everything they know and love – including one another.

Under new identities, Tammy and Grace must start afresh. Tammy joins the services and there she meets a dashing officer who begins to break her guard down.

But can the course of true love ever run smooth with Tammy unable to reveal her true self?

My Review of The Winter Runaway

Tammy and her mother Grace need to leave their home, and quickly.

I thought The Winter Runaway was an excellent historical saga as the story is fast paced and as smooth as silk to read. This is testament to Katie Flynn’s skill in creating drama and drawing her reader into the story. I was entirely captivated from the first gripping sentence of the prologue to the very last word because the plot is pacy, filled with peril and both interesting and engaging to read.

Although the story is set authentically in the 1940s, Katie Flynn incorporates real relevance to today’s world, with her themes of feminism, social class, domestic abuse and war. As a result, the story is all the more impactful as modern readers can relate to the concepts whilst enjoying the historical accuracy. Such concepts add a mature depth to the storytelling too.

I thought the characters were finely drawn. The direct speech they use feels natural and helps uncover their personalities. The use of Scottish pronunciation is perfect, with enough to add colour but not so much as to slow pace or impede understanding. There’s more about Tammy than Grace in this first book of a new series so that we understand her more deeply and she’s entirely convincing. Her strength and resilience is balanced by her anxieties about her past life and her burning need to tell Cecil the truth. I felt every moment of her dilemma with her; particularly when it came to her conflicting feelings about Rory and Cecil. I genuinely didn’t know how I might respond in her situation so that the story had me hooked. I also really appreciated that, whilst Tammy’s father is truly dreadful, unlike some sagas, he is in the minority. Rory, Cecil, Harry and Archie illustrate that not all men have violent tendencies or hold sexist beliefs. 

I loved the ending To The Winter Runaway because there’s enough resolution to satisfy the narrative, but it’s so tantalising that I can’t wait for the next book in the series. It would be wonderful to see this excellent book picked up for Sunday night television drama as I think it would be perfect. Indeed, I think The Winter Runaway is my favourite sage read to date. It’s one of those books that I simply didn’t want to put down. I thought about what the characters might be doing when I wasn’t reading about them. Don’t miss it.

About Katie Flynn

Katie Flynn is the pen name of the much-loved writer, Judy Turner, who published over ninety novels in her lifetime. Judy’s unique stories were inspired by hearing family recollections of life in Liverpool during the early twentieth century, and her books went on to sell more than eight million copies. Judy passed away in January 2019, aged 82.

The legacy of Katie Flynn lives on through her daughter, Holly Flynn, who continues to write under the Katie Flynn name. Holly worked as an assistant to her mother for many years and together they co-authored a number of Katie Flynn novels.

Holly lives in the north east of Wales with her husband Simon and their two children. When she’s not writing she enjoys walking her dog Tara in the surrounding countryside, and cooking forbidden foods such as pies, cakes and puddings! She looks forward to sharing many more Katie Flynn stories, which she and her mother devised together, with readers in the years to come.

There’s more on Instagram and Facebook.