A
beautiful, emotive and spell-binding story of two women who find
friendship and second chances when they least expect it. Perfect for
the fans of Patricia Scanlan.
Amanda
King and Tess Cuffe are strangers who share the same Georgian house,
but their lives couldn't be more different.
Amanda
seems to have it all, absolute perfection. She projects all the
accoutrements of a lady who lunches. Sadly, the reality is a soulless
home, an unfaithful husband and a very lonely heart.
By
comparison, in the basement flat, unwanted tenant Tess has spent a
lifetime hiding and shutting her heart to love.
It
takes a bossy doctor, a handsome gardener, a pushy teenager and an
abandoned cat to show these two women that sometimes letting go is
the first step to moving forward and new friendships can come from
the most unlikely situations.
What did I think?
I admit to being a huge Faith Hogan fan so I couldn't wait to get my hands on her new book; she writes such emotive and compelling fiction with strong female characters who you think of as friends as the book goes on. The Girl I Used to Know is so perfectly named as it describes the journey our two main characters are on. In this case, both women must shed the masks they have worn for so long in order to find their very own girl they used to know.
Amanda lives in a beautiful Georgian house and her life revolves around her husband and children. Amanda gets quite a wake up call when she catches sight of her reflection in a window and doesn't recognise the person she sees. With her husband spending more and more time 'at work', Amanda can spend some time reconnecting with the girl buried beneath the excess pounds.
Tess is a sitting tenant in Amanda's basement and the pair can barely say a civil word to each other. Amanda always imagined that she would include the basement as part of her home but Tess has no intention of moving out. With Tess getting older, she has no intention of popping her clogs too soon and making it easy for Amanda to get her hands on the basement flat.
When fate plays a hand and the two women find themselves spending time with each other, they find that the other isn't the person they thought she was. Amanda appears to have had an easy life, being given everything she ever wanted and dreamed of, whereas life has not been kind to Tess leaving her bitter and unhappy. They are each other's perfect medicine, along with a drop of whiskey and Matt the cat, of course.
I do love dual storyline books as you unravel the threads of a person's life to find out why and how they are the person they are now. As prickly as she was, I warmed to Tess straight away and was pinning my colours to her mast in the fight with Amanda, who I found to be one of those personality-free women...at first, I hasten to add. Then I started to feel so sorry for Amanda as she hadn't done anything to deserve what she was going through, but my pity turned to triumph as Amanda the beautiful butterfly emerged from her comfy old chrysalis.
This is another amazing book by Faith Hogan, one that leaves your heart fit to burst but is actually so thought-provoking that you can't help but examine your own life to see if you can reveal your happier true self from years ago. Pick it up today and maybe you will find the girl YOU used to know.
I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
My rating:
Buy Links:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2xDaPg4
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2z5f3hN
iBooks: http://apple.co/2ggvR1F
About the author:
Faith Hogan was born in
Ireland. She gained an Honours Degree in English Literature and
Psychology from Dublin City University and a Postgraduate Degree from
University College, Galway. She has worked as a fashion model, an
event’s organiser and in the intellectual disability and mental
health sector.
She was a winner in the
2014 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair – an international competition
for emerging writers.
Faith
Hogan Contact:
Twitter
(her favourite) https://twitter.com/GerHogan
On
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faithhoganauthor/
Web
Page. http://faithhogan.com/
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