BLOG TOUR: A Cold Whisper - Casey Dunn

 

Catch your breath. It might be your last . . . A bone-chilling, terrifying story about two sisters and secrets hiding beneath the snow.

A raging blizzard isn’t enough to keep fourteen-year-old Rose and seven-year-old Lily in their abusive home for another night. But their escape plan goes wrong when Rose disappears and Lily wakes up in the snow-covered woods, terrified and alone. She never sees her sister again.

Twenty-five years later, Lily is a social worker with a skill for finding missing children – and a deep fear of the cold. When a foster child she works with is found frozen to death in the snow, Lily is forced to confront her past trauma. What happened to Rose, and why did she abandon her sister in the snow? As terrible secrets are finally dug up, the truth takes a bone-chillingly dark turn.

Told in alternating viewpoints of Lily and Rose, this chillingly atmospheric, dark novel of suspense with jaw-dropping twists is perfect for fans of Cold as Hell by Kelley Armstrong, The Child Finder by Rene Denfeld and The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf.

What did I think?

I was drawn to A Cold Whisper by the blurb and I'm so pleased that I picked it up as it's a fantastic read.

Told via multiple points of view we follow two sets of siblings: sisters Lily and Rose and brothers Daniel and Hunter.  Lily is a social worker and she has first hand experience of being abandoned as her sister Rose left her in the snow 25 years ago.  Daniel is the new cop in town and he's trying to live up to his brother Hunter.

I just loved the way the story unravelled piece by piece and the dual sibling characters was very unusual and worked really well.  It is so devastating to read about missing children and it definitely pulled at my heartstrings.  The pacing is fast and it doesn't let up until you turn the final page.

Gripping, haunting and chilling, A Cold Whisper is a fantastic psychological thriller that hooked me from the start and kept me riveted throughout.  A highly recommended read.

I received a gifted paperback for the Bookstagram Tour and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

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Matilda Windsor is Coming Home - Anne Goodwin

In the dying days of the old asylums, three paths intersect.

Henry was only a boy when he waved goodbye to his glamorous grown-up sister; approaching sixty, his life is still on hold as he awaits her return.

As a high-society hostess renowned for her recitals, Matty’s burden weighs heavily upon her, but she bears it with fortitude and grace.

Janice, a young social worker, wants to set the world to rights, but she needs to tackle challenges closer to home.

A brother and sister separated by decades of deceit. Will truth prevail over bigotry, or will the buried secret keep family apart?

In this, her third novel, Anne Goodwin has drawn on the language and landscapes of her native Cumbria and on the culture of long-stay psychiatric hospitals where she began her clinical psychology career.

Find out more on Matilda Windsor’s webpage

What did I think?

Oh my goodness, Anne Goodwin's new novel is completely heartbreaking.  I felt so incredibly upset and angry at events fifty years in the past that altered the course of Matty and Henry's lives.  It's so annoying to think of how differently their lives could have turned out if one selfish action hadn't tore them apart.

Henry barely remembers his sister Matilda who left when he was a small child; all he has to remember her by is a conker that she gave him when she left.  It's almost as if Henry's life has been put on hold waiting for Matilda to return home.  Meanwhile, Matilda has been hidden away in a psychiatric hospital for over fifty years; her mind creating butlers and maids out of the staff to help her cope with her new life and to keep her safe from the evil prince who destroyed her life.  With the hospital facing closure, Matty's life is set to be changed once more.

The whole story is actually written very cleverly and this really makes Matty so unbelievably endearing to readers.  I was sometimes a little confused and unable to differentiate between memories and actual events, which is exactly how Matty must be feeling.  I felt as if I was not only stepping into her shoes but seeing right inside her head.  It's strange but I never really felt as if Matty's memories were unreliable, however, Henry's were a little more cloudy but this is most likely due to him being a child when they were separated.

I absolutely adored Matty; she may be a batty septuagenarian (Anne Goodwin's words) but she's really quite a character.  I am delighted that Anne is writing a sequel so we can continue Matty's journey as I'm missing her already and I really need to know what happens next.

Matilda Windsor is Coming Home is a truly immersive story that really gets under your skin and you can't help but fall in love with Matty, a wonderfully quirky and charming main character of whom I felt incredibly protective.

Many thanks to Anne Goodwin for sending me a digital ARC to review; this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon 

About the author:

Anne Goodwin grew up in the non-touristy part of Cumbria, where this novel is set. When she went to university ninety miles away, no-one could understand her accent. After nine years of studying, her first post on qualifying as a clinical psychologist was in a long-stay psychiatric hospital in the process of closing.

Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, about a woman who has kept her past identity a secret for thirty years, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize. Her second novel, Underneath, about a man who keeps a woman captive in his cellar, was published in 2017. Her short story collection, Becoming Someone, on the theme of identity, was published in November 2018. Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of prize-winning short stories.

Author links:

Website: annegoodwin.weebly.com 

Twitter @Annecdotist

Link tree https://linktr.ee/annecdotist

YouTube: Anne Goodwin’s YouTube channel

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Annecdotist

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anne-Goodwin/e/B0156O8PMO/

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Goodwin/e/B0156O8PMO/

Inspired Quill: https://www.inspired-quill.com/blog/anne-goodwin/

Newsletter signup https://bit.ly/daughtershorts

Book purchase links: https://linktr.ee/matildawindsor

BLOG BLAST: Allegation - R. G. Adams

An evil monster exposed?

Or an innocent father condemned?

A scandal will shake a small community to its very foundations.

Sandbeach, South Wales. Two women have come forward to make historical sexual allegations against a pillar of the local community, Matthew Cooper. And child-safeguarding protocol demands that Social Services remove the accused from his home and his family, while a formal assessment is carried out.

The Cooper case lands on the desk of inexperienced Social Worker, Kit Goddard. Although intrepid and intuitive, she is ill-prepared for such a high-profile case.

Kit finds herself navigating a local minefield of connections and class, reputations and rumour. Unsure whether her interference is a heroic intervention or a hurtful intrusion, she knows one thing: it will have an impact. The question is whether this impact will be to expose an iniquitous lie, or destroy an innocent life...

What did I think?

With allegations of child sexual abuse, I was expecting Allegation to be an uncomfortable read but there are so many strands to this amazing story that once I got into it I was completely gripped and couldn't put it down.

The main storyline is the allegation of historical abuse and it's one that really got under my skin.  The women haven't come forward before because they feared that nobody would believe them; they are from a rough part of town and Matthew Cooper, the man they are accusing, is well connected so it could appear that they are just after a big pay-off.  The "did he/didn't he" question constantly hovered in the back of my mind while Social Worker, Kit Goddard assessed the safety of the Cooper children.

Kit is a fantastic character; although inexperienced, she's very good at her job and will do whatever it takes to make sure the children are safe.  I didn't envy her at all, locking horns with the Coopers and constantly being threatened that they were going to make a complaint.  The way that Kit kept a clear head and put the children first is really admirable, especially when Kit has so much going on in her personal life.  The gradual revealing of Kit's backstory makes her such a well-developed character and this thread added another dimension to the story.

It took me a couple of chapters to get hooked but once I did, I absolutely raced through the book.  The chapters are quite long, there are only 16 chapters in the whole 313 page book, but the plot is so gripping that I couldn't tear my eyes away from the page.  The author has first-hand knowledge of social services and I loved getting a glimpse into the life of a social worker.  There are so many minefields to dodge and hoops to jump through that it sounds like a total nightmare and it must be awful to be so unwelcome in a home where they are carrying out an assessment.

Thought-provoking, intriguing and completely compelling, Allegation is a very impressive debut.  I'm delighted to find that it's the first book in the Kit Goddard series; I'll certainly be looking out for more.

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

My rating:

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UK.bookshop.org

Amazon

About the author:

R. G. Adams is a former social worker with thirty years of experience across all areas of social services. She lives in Wales with her family, and Allegation is her first novel.

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