Alba in bookland: Agora Books

‘Of the four of them, only three remained. And there was no going backwards from there.’

Today is Publication Day for Laura Pearson's new book, Nobody's Wife, and I am sharing my review as part of the blog tour.

Title: Nobody's Wife

Author: Laura Pearson

Published: March 28th 2019 by Agora Books

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: Emily and Josephine have always shared everything. They’re sisters, flatmates, and best friends. It’s the two of them against the world.

When Emily has the perfect wedding, and Josephine finds the perfect man, they know things will change forever. But nothing can prepare them for what, or who, one of them is willing to give up for love.

Four people. Three couples. Two sisters. One unforgivable betrayal.

From the best-selling author of Missing Pieces comes a heart-wrenching story about family, loyalty, and obsession that will have you racing to the finish.

Review: This is a story about secrets, obsession and betrayal. It is a dark story that stretches the relationship between two sisters to its limits. I found the dynamic between them fascinating. Especially how it changed as the story evolved and we knew more things about them.

After reading both of her books, Missing Pieces and this one, I have to say that Laura Pearson is really good at writing about emotions and how they affect her characters. It's easy to picture them in my mind and even feel how they are feeling.

Nobody's Wife is a short but very intense novel. The pace is slow but the emotions run high and as the tension builds, you really have no idea in which direction the story is going to go. Although the story made me feel uncomfortable in some moments and shocked me more than once, it held my attention until the very end. It's definitely a story that will make you think about it, even days after finishing it.

I would like to thank the published for sending me a copy of this book. This is my honest opinion.

About the Author:

Laura Pearson has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Chichester. She spent a decade living in London and working as a copywriter and editor for QVC, Expedia, Net a Porter, EE, and The Ministry of Justice. Now, she lives in Leicestershire, where she writes novels, blogs about her experience of breast cancer (www.breastcancerandbaby.com), runs The Motherload Book Club, and tries to work out how to raise her two children.

Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for Two Silver Crosses by Beryl Kingston. This story was originally published in 1992 but Agora Books is publishing it again with a brand new image.

Title: Two Silver Crosses

Author: Beryl Kingston

Published: March 21st 2019 by Agora Books

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: ‘Nobody is to know where we are. You must forget England. That part of your lives is over.’

Twins Ginny and Emily Holborn have everything they could ever need in their Wolverhampton home: a loving family, a garden to play in and a staff waiting to attend to their every need. Until, one summer day in 1926, they disappear without a trace.

Ten years later, bright-eyed solicitor Charlie Commoner is given his first job: track down the still-missing Holborn twins. Despatched to France, he’s left to unravel a web of infidelity, mystery, and terrifying family secrets.

Let bestselling author Beryl Kingston sweep you away on a journey from London to Paris, through tragedy and triumph in the search for two sisters wearing two silver crosses.

Review: Two Silver Crosses is a historical read set between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII. Twins Ginny and Emily are born in a world of privilege, with a French mother and an English father. They grow up in a big mansion in the English countryside but when their father dies, they need to flight to France with their mother and start from zero.

This story really starts ten years after that though. When their grandfather dies and includes them in his will, they need to be located. Something that seems almost impossible and as the search follows, there are multiple obstacles, many misunderstandings and plenty of near misses.

What I enjoyed the most in this story were all the historical references. We learned about many relevant events in that time and how they affected these characters. I found especially interesting to read how the youth in France organized themselves to fight against fascism.

However, the pace of the story was a bit slow. Although there was a lot of going on sometimes, especially in the middle part during the search, I felt that the progress in the actual plot was slow. But I have to say that it still hold my curiosity until the end and I wondered many times how everything was going to end. All in all, Two Silver Crosses is an interesting historical read with lots of secrets and twists.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending me a copy of this book. This my honest opinion.

Author Bio:

Beryl Kingston is the author of 30 novels with over a million copies sold. She has been a writer since she was 7 when she started producing poetry. She was evacuated to Felpham at the start of WWII, igniting an interest in one-time resident poet William Blake which later inspired her novel The Gates of Paradise. She was an English teacher from 1952 until 1985 when she became a full-time writer after her debut novel, Hearts and Farthings, became a bestseller. Kingston continued writing bestsellers for the next 14 years with titles ranging from family sagas to modern stories and historical novels. She currently lives in West Sussex and has three children, five grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren.

Today I am delighted to host the Blog Tour for the heart-breaking story Missing Pieces, by debut author Laura Pearson. She has stopped by to answer all my bookish questions, and if you continue reading, you'll also find my review:

Hi Laura and welcome. First, could you tell us about yourself?

Hello. Thanks for having me. Well, I live in Leicestershire with my husband and our two children, who are four and very nearly two. I’m thirty-eight. I’ve worked on and off as a copywriter and editor for years. I’ve spent many years in London and one in New York. And I’m a writer.

Your debut novel, Missing Pieces, is a heartbreaking story. Can you tell us a bit about it? What inspired this idea?

It’s about an ordinary family and the way its members are affected by a life-altering tragedy. The first part focuses on the immediate aftermath of the three-year-old daughter’s death and the second part takes place twenty-five years later, when the ripples are still being felt.

I wrote it about six years ago but the idea’s been around for longer than that. I was writing a novel years ago about a woman who was writing a novel and whose main character came to life, and there was a strand in it about her having lost her sister in childhood. I think that was the start of it. The letters the eldest daughter writes to her lost sister came first and everything else eventually slotted around that.

In the story there are three very different women, a mother and her two daughters. How would you describe each of them in a few words?

Linda, the mother, is a bit of a dreamer whose plans haven’t worked out but who was content with her ordinary life until she lost her daughter.

Esme, the eldest daughter, is a woman who’s never been able to properly move beyond losing her sister. She lives a sort of trapped existence, until she decides to face up to what happened.

Bea, the youngest daughter, has always felt shut out of her own family because they lost Phoebe before she was born. She’s broken away from them and is strong, but she’s vulnerable too.

Which one did you feel closer to while writing this book?

I love them all, but I think my heart is with Esme. She’s the character who came first, and I’ve lived with her for a really long time.

I expect many readers will cry when reading Missing Pieces, but would you describe it as life-affirming too?

I hope it is. It’s definitely got a lot of sadness but I think it ends on a hopeful note.

Missing Pieces is your debut novel, but is it the first book you have written?

It was the second novel I completed. My first needs some big edits but that is also going to be published by Agora in the future.

What can we expect from you next?

My next novel will hopefully be coming out early next year. It’s called I Wanted You To Know and it’s about a mother and daughter who only get to spend a year together but still have a huge impact on one another’s lives.

About the Book:

Title: Missing Pieces

Author: Laura Pearson

Published: June 21st 2018 by Agora Books

Amazon | Amazon UK

Blurb: What if the one thing that kept you together was breaking you apart?

All Linda wants to do is sleep. She won’t look at her husband. She can’t stand her daughter. And she doesn’t want to have this baby. Having this baby means moving on, and she just wants to go back to before. Before their family was torn apart, before the blame was placed.

Alienated by their own guilt and struggling to cope, the Sadler family unravels. They grow up, grow apart, never talking about their terrible secret.

That is until Linda’s daughter finds out she’s pregnant. Before she brings another Sadler into the world, Bea needs to know what happened twenty-five years ago. What did they keep from her? What happened that couldn’t be fixed?

A devastating mistake, a lifetime of consequences. How can you repair something broken if pieces are missing?

Missing Pieces is Laura Pearson’s debut novel.

Review: Missing Pieces is a tragic story of loss. When the worse happens to Linda, she loses the will to live. There is no happiness or light anymore in her life, just guilt. For me, it was difficult to read about Linda's story as it is a very sombre and dark one. But even if I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to go through what she went through, I think the author's portrait of loss, grief and depression felt very real and raw.

The second part of the book focuses in Linda's daughter, Bea. It's been more than 20 years since the tragedy that made their family crumble but it still feels like a dark cloud above them. They've never talked about it openly. For Bea, it's time to finally uncover all their secrets and be a family again. I found this second part more engaging than the first as I became more invested in the story, I cared about these characters and I was rooting for them.

It was heart-breaking to read what happened to this family and how it affected them. In my opinion, Missing Pieces is hard to read but worth it. Beautiful writing and very good character building. I'll definitely be looking out for Laura Pearson's next story.

Blog Tour: Nobody's Wife by Laura Pearson

Blog Tour: Silver Crosses by Beryl Kingston

Blog Tour: Missing Pieces - Author Interview with Laura Pearson

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