BLOG TOUR: The Beginner's Guide to Loneliness - Laura Bambrey

 

The perfect feel-good read from an exciting new voice in women’s fiction, for fans of Heidi Swain, Cathy Bramley and Jenny Colgan.

Tori Williamson is alone. After a tragic event left her isolated from her loved ones, she’s been struggling to find her way back to, well – herself. That’s why she set up her blog, The Beginner’s Guide to Loneliness, as a way of – anonymously – connecting with the outside world and reaching others who just need a little help sometimes.

 

When she’s offered a free spot on a wellbeing retreat in exchange for a review on her blog, Tori is anxious about opening herself up to new surroundings. But after her three closest friends – who she talks to online but has never actually met – convince her it’ll do her some good, she reluctantly agrees and heads off for three weeks in the wild (well, a farm in Wales).

 

From the moment she arrives, Tori is sceptical and quickly finds herself drawn to fellow sceptic Than, the retreat’s dark and mysterious latecomer. But as the beauty of The Farm slowly comes to light she realizes that opening herself up might not be the worst thing. And sharing a yurt with fellow retreater Bay definitely isn’t.  Will the retreat be able to fix Tori? Or will she finally learn that being lonely doesn’t mean she’s broken . . .

 

Welcome to The Beginner’s Guide to Loneliness! Where you can learn to move mountains by picking up the smallest of stones…

What did I think?

I LOVED THIS BOOK!  Yes, I'm shouting but if just one person hears me then it's a job well done.  Laura Bambrey's awesome debut novel should come on prescription as it's not only perfect escapism for our troubled times but it's guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.  

Tori is such a wonderful character and I loved her from the start.  Owner of the blog, The Beginner's Guide to Loneliness, she readily admits that she is lonely but she has built up a following online that reminds her that there are other lonely people out there.  With no family or friends in her life, Tori has a select group of 3 virtual friends she has never met but who she loves dearly.  When she is invited to review a wellbeing retreat for her blog, Tori must step out from behind her screen and meet some real people.

Everyone at the retreat is there for a reason, some to escape the real world and others to work through deep-rooted issues.  I don't think Tori realises how much she fits into the latter category until the magic of the retreat starts to work on her.  The double whammy of events in Tori's past resulted in her pulling down and bolting the shutters but her new friends at the retreat have the key and together they have the strength to overcome any difficulty.

I feel like I went to the retreat with Tori as I found myself looking at my own life, particularly how I think about and talk to myself, and I don't think I have ever used the Kindle highlight function so much.  I loved the completely honest and enlightening excerpts from Tori's blog at the beginning of every chapter and I must have highlighted most of them.  I need to read the book again just to revisit these pearls of wisdom because I absolutely raced through the whole book in my eagerness to get back to The Farm to find out what would happen next.

Beautifully written, The Beginner's Guide to Loneliness is a completely awesome debut.  It's uplifting, heartwarming and surprisingly enlightening.  Perfectly plotted, it's painted like a masterpiece with just the right amount of shade so it's not all sweetness and light.  It's so good that I will be reading it again and if that's not the highest recommendation I can give, I don't know what is.  A stunning debut and an absolute must read.

I received an ARC to read and review for the blog tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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Her Last Holiday - C.L. Taylor

You come to Soul Shrink to be healed. You don’t expect to die.

Two years ago, Fran’s sister Jenna disappeared on a wellness retreat in Gozo that went terribly wrong.

Tom Wade, the now infamous man behind Soul Shrink Retreats, has just been released from prison after serving his sentence for the deaths of two people. But he has never let on what happened to the third victim: Jenna.

Determined to find out the truth, Fran books herself onto his upcoming retreat – the first since his release – and finds herself face to face with the man who might hold the key to her sister’s disappearance. The only question is, will she escape the retreat alive? Or does someone out there want Jenna’s secrets to stay hidden?

What did I think?

I love C. L. Taylor books so I know that once I pick one up, I won't be able to put it down.  Her new novel, Her Last Holiday is as gripping and highly addictive as I would expect and I absolutely raced through it, however, I found that I became more puzzled than enraptured as the story went on.

I'll start with the puzzling part...

Whilst the story of Jenna's disappearance and Tom Wade's part in it is very intriguing, the sheer number of characters over two timelines made it a little confusing.  Some characters appear in both timelines but they have different names now and some characters in the present are pretending to be someone else so they have two names too.  It felt like every other character has two personas and I don't know whether it was an issue with the proof copy but the names sometimes got mixed up.  For example, an undercover reporter seemed to switch to her real name (Caroline) part way through with other guests suddenly referring to Joy as Caroline.  Also in Jenna's storyline, Tim and Alison stopped breathing yet it was Tim and Bessie who died.  Did Alison make a miraculous recovery, was Alison also known as Bessie or was this a proof copy mistake?  I certainly did a lot of virtual head scratching but hopefully any possible errors will be corrected in the finished copy and it'll be less confusing.

Now I've got that out of the way, the story itself was very good.  Jenna and Fran have the mother from HELL.  Oh my god, no wonder they are both f$%ked up.  In their mother's eyes, Fran can do no right and Jenna can do no wrong, although the quest for perfection clearly takes its toll and Jenna books herself onto a wellness retreat.  When two people die and Jenna goes missing on his retreat in Malta, Tom Wade is sent to prison.  Two years later, he is released and rather insensitively, as if sticking two fingers up to the victims, sets up another retreat in Wales.  The mother from hell, after losing one daughter this way and without a care for Fran's safety, books a place on the new retreat for Fran.  She is hoping that Fran can find out what happened to Jenna, which is more important to her than keeping her remaining daughter safe.

Fran is a really bad actress and a terrible liar, often forgetting that she's supposed to be called Geraldine and I really feared for her safety.  With so many people not being who they seem to be, I was filled with dread that something awful would happen to her.  It's all very tense and suspenseful as the past is revealed and the present unfolds, which kept me rapidly turning the pages as I approached the satisfying conclusion.  

Her Last Holiday is twisty, intriguing, suspenseful and very addictive.  Nobody writes such addictive storylines as C.L. Taylor.

Many thanks to the publisher, Avon, for sending me an ARC; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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The Lie - C. L. Taylor

I know your name’s not really Jane Hughes . . .

Jane Hughes has a loving partner, a job in an animal sanctuary and a tiny cottage in rural Wales. She’s happier than she’s ever been but her life is a lie. Jane Hughes does not really exist.

Five years earlier Jane and her then best friends went on holiday but what should have been the trip of a lifetime rapidly descended into a nightmare that claimed the lives of two of the women.

Jane has tried to put the past behind her but someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed Jane and everything she loves...

What did I think?

I checked this e-book out of the library and absolutely raced through it; it was so fast paced and full of twists that I couldn't put it down.  Emma has reinvented herself as Jane following a trip to Nepal with her friends.  As the cracks start to show in Jane’s new identity we alternate between stories of Jane and Emma.

I really enjoyed the Emma story.  It would be so easy to write about a perfect group of friends, but where would be the fun in that? Cally Taylor has very cleverly analysed a friendship group with surprising buried feelings of envy and resentment coming to the fore.  At first I felt that Emma was on the periphery of the group but I think all of the girls are terribly flawed, which is what makes it so good.  As their friendship went into meltdown in Nepal you just knew it was going to end in tragic consequences.

Jane almost seems like a different person, and I felt really protective of her when the life that she had now built was threatened.  She has struggled to put what happened in Nepal behind her and she has grown into a caring person who finds out what real friends are in the end.

This is a riveting page-turner that you really will struggle to put down.  I'm now looking forward to reading Cally's début, The Accident, and I'll definitely be looking out for her next book.

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