Read from January 16th - 22nd 2015.
Published April 1st 2015 by Legend Times Group
Format Paperback - 288 pages
| Review | WHOA!!!!! I can say no more right now apart from, that was amazing. One of them books where you read it and then you are left just staring at the wall with your mouth open for a few minutes. A review of this book will be written this weekend....... This psychological thriller is set in 1984, at the time of the coal miners strike in Britain. This strike had a huge impact on close net communities and would take a good couple of generations to recover from. A main character that the story is centered around is Clare Jackson. Clare is a North East newspaper reporter who missed a promotion due to personal reasons which are not clear at the beginning but become apparent as time goes on and the reader connects more with Clare. This event is touched upon very lightly during the story and explains some of Clare's behaviour throughout. Whilst coming to terms with this event and losing the promotion Clare is sent on an investigation into the death of a nine month old baby boy, Jamie, on the housing estate where many of the miners resided. Whilst gathering information, she comes across a young girl called Amy, who isn't all she seems. She lives in the dilapidated flats on the estate with her mother and her dog Max but fends for herself and has a penchant of making up stories that it was difficult to know what was truth and what was fiction. Her own mother didn't believe much of what she said. Her mother lacks in parenting skills often leaving Amy alone for days so she could go off with 'boyfriends'. Clare instinctively wanted to protect and nurture Amy, despite warnings from her friends to stay away and stop her unprofessional attachment to 'a story'. But Clare was convinced that she could help Amy. Clare became a real friend to Amy, someone the little girl could trust. Clare believed she had an attachment with Amy, which meant that events started very soon to spiral out of control for everyone involved. With Clare's psychological emotional state due to her own unresolved issues influencing her actions, Clare works hard pushing herself into her work almost becoming a one man band on some kind of adrenaline rush reporting the story of the baby, while also reporting on the situation behind the picket line where miners and police were increasingly moving into a volatile situation. I don't want to say too much more for fear of spoiling the story for others and letting too much out but lets just say this story is full of twists and turns that you just don't see happening and some you do and work out for yourself. It isn't all it seems. Things are not what they seem. I really enjoyed reading this story.I wasn't too sure about it at the beginning but it was such a smooth easy read, I soon got into it and found it very difficult to put down. I even found myself smiling in places at the 1984 references that took me down memory lane. Although only 8 at the time, I remember the time and the miners strikes well and how tough it was on mining families. It was one of those books that played on my mind after I had read it. Bea Davenport who incidentally was a journalist in her own right, really reeled me in and caught my attention and imagination well as I'm sure she did for others who read this. She depicts the communities of the time very well showing the hardships of a poor community in poor housing during hard times but without the story appearing all doom and gloom. It wasn't a depressing read but the content was very raw. There wasn't much I didn't like about this book although the ending was a little cut short I felt. I loved how the ending played out but due to the intense nature of the book, I personally would have liked a slower roll out to the last sentence. I really loved this book and it has fast become one of my favourites. I will have to look into some of Bea Davenports other works as I truly like her style of writing. Very easy read even if the content wasn't. 4 out of 5 stars. |
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