21st May 2019 – White Tulip Candles

PUBLISHERS BLURB

Fans of Martina Cole, Kimberley Chambers and Jessie Keane will be hooked by Fierce Girl.

When loyalty is everything, betrayal hits harder.

Anna Davis has grown up. She’s not the naive runaway who escaped her vicious gangland boyfriend anymore. She’s tougher than ever and she won’t let anyone take advantage of her – or the people she loves.

Anna’s devoted boyfriend, East End baron Freddie Tyler, is in trouble. There’s a rat in his organisation and he needs to stop the leaks before a very big mistake from his past is revealed to people who will want swift and brutal revenge.

Anna wants to help Freddie but she’s got problems of her own. Her best friend Tanya’s mother has turned up, and is staking a claim on Tanya’s share of their club. With Tanya buying her mum’s reformed sinner act, Anna knows she needs to act before both their friendship and Club Anya goes up in flames.

But if there’s one thing Anna and Freddie have learned, it’s how to play the game, and as their enemies close in they’ll fight with everything they’ve got to protect the life they’ve built.

MY REVIEW

After the dramatic end of the previous book, this jumps straight in….

Tanya’s mum, Rosie, arrives to help her daughter, she’s the perfect mum, isn’t she? But this puts Anna and Tanya’s friendship to the test…..will it survive?

It was interesting to learn more of the backgrounds of both Anna and Tanya……character building? To say the least.

Freddie is still Freddie, still carrying on ‘business’ and the mafia are back too with lots of insights into the violent gangland scene. But, as usual things never run smoothly in this nail biter of a thriller. Gritty, tense and will you on tenterhooks right to the very end….I’m already looking forward to the next in the series…

Thank you to Bookouture for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour and for the promotional materials and a free copy of the ebook in exchange for my honest review.

Author Bio:

Emma Tallon is a British, gritty crime writer, adventurer, Londoner and mother to a young son. Starting her career a few years ago as a ghostwriter, Emma crafted some of the most adventurous, edgy and heart-wrenching stories you can find on the shelves today.

In March 2017 Emma stepped out of the literary shadows and self-published her first book, Life Game. The book was an instant success, the results far exceeding anything she had expected. As news of Life Games popularity spread, she joined forces with W.F.Howes and the audiobook was launched in October 2017.

In December 2017, Emma signed a three book deal with publishers Bookouture. This included Life Game which was changed, re-edited and re-released as Runaway Girl.

Drawing inspiration for her books from a mixture of her own observations and an active imagination, the characters Emma paints are colourful and larger than life. Her story lines are an interesting recipe of deep emotion and violent grit, that keep her readers engrossed.

With more books in the works for this series already, Emma has many more stories planned out for the future.

Social media links

For more information on Emma or to join her mailing list, please go to: http://www.emmatallon.com or alternatively, follow her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/emmatallonofficial or on Twitter: @EmmaEsj

Purchase Link

https://geni.us/B07P32Z5NSSocial

PUBLISHERS BLURB

A hypnotic story of YOUTH, SEX and POWER

A story of two women cast out by the same community though separated by a hundred years

A story of two extraordinary, magnetic women and their disappearances – a hundred years apart – from the small New England town they call home.

Henrietta and Jane are growing up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, their mother a remote artist, their father in thrall to the folklore and legend of their corner of New England. When Henrietta falls under the spell of Kaus, an outsider and petty criminal, Jane takes to trailing the couple, spying on their trysts, until one night, Henrietta vanishes into the woods.

Elspeth and Claire are sisters separated by an ocean. Elspeth’s pregnancy at seventeen meant she was quickly married and sent away from her Scottish village to make a new life in America. When she comes to the attention of the local mill owner, a series of wrenching and violent events unfolds, culminating in her disappearance.

As Jane and Claire search in their own times for their missing sisters, each uncovers the strange legend of Cold Thursday, and of a family apparently transformed into coyotes. But what does his myth really mean? Are their sisters dead, destroyed by the men who desired them? Or have they made new lives, elsewhere, beyond the watchful eyes of the community they longed to escape?

MY REVIEW

The Den by Abi Maxwell is set in New Hampshire and follows two families who live on the same farm but 150 years apart.

It starts with Jane, who is Henrietta’s younger sister. Henrietta is a bit of a wild child at 15. She meets Kaus and Jane follows them on their trysts and watches them and as any younger sister, she is partly in awe and partly judgemental.

Henrietta goes missing and Jane is distraught…..she searches the Den as she recalls the story her father told her of another family, many years ago that disappeared leaving just coyotes behind……

The story also tells of a family from 150 years before. Elspeth, who, unmarried, got pregnant and was forced to leave Scotland for America where her new husband believes life will be better…

But, bored and lonely, she misses her sister Claire, she befriends an older man, a neighbour and after a horrible, violent altercation with her husbands boss…she, and her son, run to him for help…and they disappear…

Both stories seem to mirror each other from Jane and Henrietta to Elspeth and Claire. As both Jane and Claire try to find out just what happened to their sisters, the same story of a family who turned into coyotes links them both….

Will Jane find Henrietta? Where did Claire go……? What happened to the missing family from the old story……did they turn into coyotes?

I felt this totally captivating tale is about family and love and coming of age, but also just how badly women suffered (and suffer) for their choices not being what was expected of them, the isolation and despair this caused and the consequences for those closest to them. An emotional, haunting family drama by Abi Maxwell and I can thoroughly recommend it.

Thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour and for the promotional materials and a free copy of the book in exchange for my honest, unbiased review.

you can buy a copy here (click on the image)

About the Author

Abi Maxwell is the author of an acclaimed story collection, LAKE PEOPLE, and her fiction has also appeared in McSweeney’s. She studied writing at the University of Montana and now lives in New Hampshire, where she grew up, with her husband and son.

THE DEN

By Abi Maxwell

Published by Tinder Press Hardback- 16th May 2019- £18.99

‘There’s a plain-spoken quality to Maxwell’s writing that suggests comparisons to Marilynne Robertson and Alice Munro’ MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

‘Maxwell’s landscape is not modern culture but traditional folklore… secrets are kept, secrets are told… beautifully precise’

HARPERS