Are you short of money before Christmas but still want to lose yourself in a novel that’s “captivating and compelling”?
There’s a #Kindlecountdown deal for
MISSING Past and Present by Diana Jackson for
ONLY 99p
on Amazon.co.uk
until Monday 7th January
Recent reviews on Amazon:
*****
“A well-crafted and satisfying novel, dealing with some heavy topics such as abandonment, betrayal and mental health issues. The author threads together two stories, one in present day and one in the past, and flows from one to the other seamlessly. I loved the use of the dice (a chance find) to introduce her memories, rating the lows as ones and twos and the highs as fives and sixes. Diana writes so well, this feels more like a record of real events. Definite thumbs up and one of my rare 5 stars.” Jules5691 September 2020
****
“The premise of Diana Jackson’s novel is that life is mostly as random as the results of rolling dice. The challenges that life throws at us can be positive sixes, or disastrous ones and twos. So she weaves the stories of her main characters, Dot, Jamal and Angelina, around a whole batch of social issues that could similarly hit any of us by a simple twist of fate: homelessness; mental health; abandonment; and betrayal. Some great descriptive writing, but it’s the redemptions in the novel that are striking, the bringing together of all those threads, from the past and from the present, from the characters’ various stories, making us see that, even despite life’s more disastrous dice throws, given the right support, another outcome might be possible, the missing may be found.” David Ebsworth October 2020
I’ve just tried to catch up with my reviews on Goodreads which I’m ashamed to say were nearly a year behind. How did that happen?
borrowed from friends
I have not been able to catch up on all of the novels I read in 2019; there are just too many, but I have added, however, all of the reviews I’ve written on this blog to give a flavour of what I’ve been enjoying all year. I do not write reviews for books I would give less than 3 *** to.
I picked up The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine at Waterstones since it was Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year. Although not a Scottish author, her setting for this and Women of the Dunes, couldn’t be more Scottish, based on the north west coast.
Libby follows the trail of stories from her home in Canada to the Hebrides, tales passed down to her of Ullaness, Ulla the Norse-woman and the chapel, involving intrigue, disappearances and possibly murder.
Diana Jackson 