Keep Me Safe by Daniela Sacerdoti #bookreview

About Keep Me Safe

When Anna's partner walks away from their relationship, she is shattered. But it is her little girl Ava who takes it hardest of all. The six year old falls silent for three days. When she does speak, her words are troubling. Ava wants to go home. To a place called Seal. To her other mother.

Anna knows to unravel the mystery she must find Seal and take Ava there. She hopes this tiny island will unlock her daughter's memories. But could it also offer a new life...and unexpected love...for Anna too?

My review of Keep Me Safe

I love a good supernatural story with a twist of romance and Keep Me Safe delivered on both counts. This was such a comforting book to read, albeit with a bittersweet aftertaste. It just made me want to hug my little ones that little bit tighter and to be thankful for all the great things in my life, my husband included. This really is a life affirming book.

Anna is a working mum, a newly qualified nurse, and mum to six-year-old Ava. When her long term boyfriend, and Ava's fatter, Toby, suddenly decides to leave then to embark upon a new life in Australia, the lives of both Anna and Ava are turned upside down. The shock of what happens has a profound, negative impact upon Ava, psychologically, and it is during this time that she asks for her other mum. At a complete loss of what to do, Anna seeks help, but as nobody understands what has happened to her little girl, she decides to take matters into her own hands. It is only through Ava's happy drawings of an island where she can be seen standing with seals and a mystery woman,  that Ava seems to find any solace. So, after a search online, Anna finds the remote island of Seal, an island that resembles Ava's drawings, and decides that it would be the perfect place for a relaxing holiday, away from the stresses and strains of the past. 

Once they arrive on the island they find that their hotel reservation has not been booked properly online, and so they have nowhere to stay. It is at this point that fate intervenes and they meet Sorren, the son of the woman who owns a guest house on the island, who then offers them the spare guest room. From this moment on, Anna and Ava become part of island life.

This really is such a beautiful book. The imagery of the sea was so palpable. I could taste the salt on the wind and could smell the sea. It is hugely romantic, both in its depictions of maternal love, in finding that special someone, your soulmate, to spend the rest of your life with and in the island itself. What I also really enjoyed was the multiple first person narration in this book. This allowed me to fully understand the characters and to get a unique insight into who they were. Each voice was distinctive, and I feel that this alternating viewpoint was needed to get the most from this story.  The characters are also hugely engaging, all helping to add to the rich tapestry of the plot. 

This is a book about second sight, about trusting your gut instinct and of making those decisions in life that scare you witless. This is what Anna does for her daughter. She goes to Seal on a whim, as she wants to see her daughter happy once again, but what she gets is so much more from her visit.

I was also thrilled to learn that Keep Me Safe is the first book in a new series, and I look forward to reading the second instalment. If you love a romantic read that is blended with the supernatural and a lot of heart, then you'll love this book. I couldn't put it down.

With thanks to the publisher and Bookbridgr who sent me a hardback copy for review purposes. 

Keep Me Safe is published by Headline Review on 6 April 2017. The book is available to buy from Amazon here.

About the author

Daniela Sacerdoti is a phenomenon. Over one million copies of her novels have been sold in eBook, her debut novel Watch Over Me was the eighth bestselling Kindle book of all time in 2015 and she was also ranked as the eleventh top-selling Kindle author.

Daniela writes beautiful, haunting and bestselling fiction for adults (the Glen Avich series), young adults (the Sarah Midnight trilogy) and children. Her novels have been translated in twelve languages.

Daniela was born and raised in Italy. She studied Classics, then lived in Scotland for fourteen years, where she married and taught in a primary school. Daniela's children's book Really WeirdRemovals.Com was shortlisted for the Scottish Children's Book Awards. She has also written for the BBC.

Daniela, her husband and their two sons make their home in a tiny village in the Alps. To discover more about Daniela and her world, visit www.danielasacerdoti.com.

I Liked My Life by Abby Fabiaschi - Review

About - I Liked My Life

Maddy was a loving, devoted stay-at-home mother...until she committed suicide, which left her husband Brady and her teenage daughter Eve heartbroken and reeling, wondering how they can possibly continue without her. Maddy, however, isn’t quite done with them. In an attempt to fulfill her family’s needs, Maddy watches and meddles from beyond the grave, determined to find the perfect wife and mother to replace herself and heal her family. That’s when she finds Rory: a free-spirited schoolteacher, who Maddy maneuvers into Eve’s confidences, but who turns out to be harboring a tragedy of her own.

In a story both deeply moving and charming, with the domestic insight of Jodi Picoult, I Liked My Life from debut author Abby Fabiaschi is a mother’s final blessing for a family learning to live again.

My Review of I Liked My Life

 

I have no idea where to start in reviewing this book, other than to say that I completely adored this story. I'll try my very best to describe the essence of this book and what it means to me, without giving the plot away.  So let me start by writing about Maddy, one of the three characters who narrates the story. She is the mother of Eve and wife to Brady, and throughout the novel we learn of why she committed suicide. I found her to be very captivating and very easy to read. She reels you in with her scheming and the need to once again create the perfect family. She wants Brady and Eve to be happy without her, and so therefore she feels that she needs to find the perfect wife and mother replacements. Now, this whole being able to manipulate people from the grave is a very interesting concept and, it could have really been executed badly on the page. It could have been completely over sentimentalised, causing a chasm between the reader and character. But, this is not the case. The author has managed to pull off a believable and likeable mother figure who is not perfect and who simply wants the best for her loved ones who are left behind. She is startlingly real.

 

Then we have Brady, the grieving husband, and once again, the author has got this just right. We feel his anger and betrayal, because of the way in which Maddy died. Reading his words on the page, we come to realise that grieving for his wife is a difficult process for him, due to the way in which she died. He too is almost in limbo and needs to work out how to push forward. Of course he also has his teenage daughter to care for and all of the complexities that come with raising a teenager. The dialogue between them was some of the most real and frank discussions that I have ever read in a novel.

 

Eve is the daughter left behind, and she too learns how to grieve in her very own way. As well as having to deal with the loss of her mother, she has all of the normal teenage angst and troubles to deal with which make her life far from perfect. I really liked Eve and found her to be a young woman who simply wanted her mother back, to tell her that she was sorry for taking her for granted - my heart ached at her yearning for her mother and the fact that she would never have the chance to tell her how much she loved her.

 

I feel that the book's blurb does not do this book justice. This is a book about  family learning to live again, but it is so much more. It is a ghost story in a sense, that talks of all consuming love. But it is also a book that discusses the complexities of father and daughter relationships. That is what I truly feel is at the heart of this book, the daughter/father bond. It is a book about new beginnings - but also, it is a book about learning to heal from the past.

 

I Liked My Life is published by St. Martin's Press on 31st January 2017

The Brazillian Husband by Rebecca Powell

The Brazilian Husband

Book description

SUNSHINE, SAMBA, SECRETS AND LIES - this summer’s must-read.

“…scrawled in biro, the words which had brought me here…

‘Take me home’.”

Determined to honor her late husband’s final request, Judith and her teenage step-daughter, Rosa, set out on a journey from London to Brazil to track down his family and take his ashes home.

But when Judith’s search leads her to Ricardo, a handsome but haunted human rights lawyer, she begins to unravel a web of lies surrounding her husband’s past: a past which is about to come crashing into their present in the form of Rosa’s real mother.

As the two women navigate their way through this vibrant country of contrasts, they find themselves struggling to salvage their own fractured relationship and put the past behind them.

The perfect blend of romance and suspense, set against the stunning backdrop of northeast Brazil, The Brazilian Husband is a story of friendship, family and finding out who we really are.

The perfect page-turner to get you in the mood for the Rio Olympics...

My Review of The Brazilian Husband

 

 

I love to read and to escape to other worlds and this book did exactly that. While reading I was transported to Brazil. I could smell the air, see the people and I completely immersed myself in their culture. It was fairly obvious from reading this fantastic story that the author knew Brazil well. The way in which she writes is from the heart; she knows what she is talking about, both as a woman who has lived in the country, and as a woman who has worked in a shelter supporting women. This oozes from every pore of every page.

For me this book worked on many levels. Firstly we have Brazil. I fell in love with Brazil and now want to go there. As a young girl I would very often pick up a random travel book from the library and devour it from cover to cover, I sometimes still do. Even though this book is obviously a work of literary fiction, it introduced me to the world of Brazil in which a travel book could never do.

Secondly we have the central theme of family and motherhood. What it means to be a mother, to have a family, to love, to nurture. We follow Judith's story of how she deals with the loss of her beloved Edson and we learn how unconventional their marriage was. But what is the modern family? How do we quantify what a 'normal' family is? These are the questions that we are left pondering and which I found totally refreshing for the 21st Century. We then also have the flip side of what it means to be a daughter in an unconventional family, as we read Rosa's thoughts as she shares her feelings. This I found very insightful and it added a new dimension to the storytelling, helping to enrich Judith's character.
 

Although very much dominated by the female voice, we have a strong male presence in the book in the form of Ricardo, the man who runs a shelter for children and who helps Judith to bridge the gap between the past and present.  I am also not ashamed to say that I fell secretly in love with him.

Throughout the book all of the central characters go on a journey to find out who they really are and who they are meant to be in life. This is something that we all struggle with at times. But for me the real joy of this book was that of watching Judith and Rosa's journey together. I was allowed into their world, and what a privilege it was to share the ups and downs with them.

This is a remarkable debut novel by a talented and empathic writer. I look forward to reading more by Rebecca Powell.

I received a review copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Rebecca Powell was born in Bristol.  She has a degree in French and Portuguese from the University of Leeds and in her early twenties she worked for a year at a women's shelter in the northeast of Brazil, before moving to London, where she continued to work for a number of national charities.  She now lives in the South West of France with her husband and three children.  Rebecca is the sister of award-winning novelist Gareth L Powell (Ack-Ack Macaque; The Recollection) and children's author Huw Powell (Spacejackers).


The Brazilian Husband is available in paperback and kindle from Amazon here

 

 

No Turning Back byTracy Buchanan

 

While browsing the shelves in my local Sainsbury's I spotted this beautiful book cover, and thought that I recognised it. I did! A few days previously I had read a post about it on twitter, and at the thought that I really must read this book! So of course I popped it into the shopping trolley. 

Book description taken from Amazon

You’d kill to protect your child – wouldn’t you?
FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF My Sister’s Secret
When radio presenter Anna Graves and her baby are attacked on the beach by a crazed teenager, Anna reacts instinctively to protect her daughter.

But her life falls apart when the schoolboy dies from his injuries. The police believe Anna’s story, until the autopsy results reveal something more sinister.
A frenzied media attack sends Anna into a spiral of self-doubt. Her precarious mental state is further threatened when she receives a chilling message from someone claiming to be the ‘Ophelia Killer’, responsible for a series of murders twenty years ago.

Is Anna as innocent as she claims? And is murder forgivable, if committed to save your child’s life…?

My Review of No Turning Back

 

At the beginning we are quickly introduced to Anna and her daily morning radio show. I instantly liked her, and this I felt was very important. To really enjoy the book and to empathise with Anna, you have to like her. 

The crux of the book, for me, was that as a mother I would do anything to save my child, and this means ANYTHING. I have two young sons and throughout the book I kept placing myself in Anna's position and wondering if I would have done the same thing to protect my child. Instinctively I told myself yes, of course I would have done the same as she did. But underneath is a rumbling current of uncertainty. It is a hypothetical question... the correct answer is yes, but in reality, who knows? And this is the ethical dilemma which the author so eloquently explores.

Throughout the book I agreed with most of the decisions that Anna made. I did question some of the risks that she took, thinking that at times she had completely overstepped the mark, but I understood why she did what she did, and for that I could forgive her mistakes.

Although this book is dubbed as a thriller, I actually found that the heart of the book was about the relationships between women. The mother and daughter bond, the granddaughter and grandmother bond. These family dynamics were beautifully explored and portrayed, while not being over sentimental.

The book did live up to its theme of being a suspenseful thriller, as throughout we are left hanging as to who has been committing these awful crimes, past and present. Hand on heart I had the suspect completely wrong. I was gripped until the very last page.

This is a thriller with lots of heart and a truly enjoyable read.

 

No Turning Back was published on 28th July 2016 by Avon Books

About the Author (taken from Amazon)

Tracy Buchanan lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband, their little girl and their one-eyed Jack Russell. Tracy travelled extensively while working as a travel magazine editor, and has always been drawn to the sea after spending her childhood holidays on the south coast visiting family, a fascination that inspires her writing. She now dedicates her time to writing and procrastinating on Twitter.