REVIEW and GIVEAWAY
Hiding
by Jenny Morton Potts
Hiding has just been released and is ON SALE for $3.99 (save $2.00) to 1 March. Author Jenny Morton Potts joins us today to share a guest post and an excerpt from the book. You can also read my review and enter our exclusive giveaway for a chance to win an ebook copy of Hiding.
Description
Keller Baye and Rebecca Brown live on different sides of the Atlantic. Until she falls in love with him, Rebecca knows nothing of Keller. But he’s known about her for a very long time, and now he wants to destroy her.
This is the story of two families. One living under the threat of execution in North Carolina. The other caught up in a dark mystery in the Scottish Highlands. The families’ paths are destined to cross. But why? And can anything save them when that happens?
Excerpt
They died, Rebecca Brown’s mum and dad. They were killed on a road with a big reputation. Rebecca could only imagine it. She was hundreds of miles from the scene of the crash when it happened. When she thought of that road, she pictured it covered in ice, black ice, since the accident took place on a bitter December night. The A42, was the road’s alphanumeric name. The Killer Road, they called it back then in the papers. The Killer Road has struck again! The headlines came into Rebecca’s mind like a voice, like Vincent Price, as if the road arched up into vertical life, a tarmac monster stalking its victims.
Rebecca Brown was four years old when she became an orphan, alongside her sister, Colette, and her brother, Austen. Rebecca was the youngest. She couldn’t even remember the moment she was told. What had they said? ‘Mummy and Daddy have had a terrible accident, dear. In the car.’ At the time, she knew little more than the fact. They were gone. They’d been there all the days of her life, and then they were not. Of the circumstances and detail, she knew next to nothing. Perhaps Rebecca hadn’t thought to ask questions. Perhaps there was little more to say to a child so young. As Rebecca grew, though, so did her thirst for knowledge. But it seemed that, even if there had been a window of opportunity to make her enquiries, that window got bricked up years ago. There was a solid wall now between Rebecca Brown and the truth.
Julia and Stephen, her parents had been called. ‘Julia and Stephen,’ Rebecca liked to say aloud when she was alone in her garret bedroom. She could barely remember them but she thought they sounded really nice. She was sure that they were kind people, with ready smiles and lovely clean clothes.
It was their grandparents who raised the Brown children. It was the Grands who took the youngsters into their care at Taransay, a red sandstone mansion in the north of Scotland. Taransay was only partially restored. It had vast, austere rooms and draughty, wood-panelled corridors; a real Amityville Horror of a home, scary even on a cornflower sky summer’s day, and a weird contrast to the heavenly Highland surroundings. They lived high up on a plateau that could have been made for a view. There was an imposing tree-lined driveway and the steading, as Rebecca’s grandfather Ralph liked to call it, overlooked the magnificent Morar Sands. The golden beach met the Atlantic Ocean which unfurled itself like ruffled navy silk on the calmest of days, but the fierce ones were just as precious to Rebecca, as she stood at her dormer window looking out across the sea’s tossing and turning. She loved it best when the gods got angry down there in the depths and rose up, throwing the spray right at her face.
[Want more? Click below to read a longer excerpt.]
Praise for the Book
“A very well written novel with twists and turns that when unravelled will leave you wide eyed and feeling slightly breathless. […] This is the first novel I’ve read from this talented author and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Read it, persevere and love it as I did.” ~ Nora on Goodreads
“This tale has mystery, intrigue, action, sexual awakening and humour, which is accomplished with great skill and sensitivity. The author knows her craft and she knows it well.” ~ Sergiu Pobereznic (author)
“I really loved this book, I liked the way it grabbed my attention from the very beginning and did not let me go until the very last words. I wasn’t sure of where this book was going to take me, but as it had piqued my interest early on I was quite willing to be led and greedily kept turning the pages.” ~ Yvonne Me and My Books
“Jenny Morton Potts is a great writer and story teller, with a unique creativity and very contemporary.” ~ CWhedon
“… it’s a book with no excess verbiage, unnecessary padding or meaningless meanderings. The focus, intensity and momentum were maintained throughout. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable read.” ~ Denzil
My Review
By Lynda Dickson
When she was four, Rebecca was orphaned - along with her older brother Austen and sister Charlotte – and sent to live with her grandparents in Scotland. On her tenth birthday, Rebecca tries to find out how her parents died. She knows the rest of the family is keeping something from her and is determined to uncover the truth. Many years later, she meets Keller. He’s keeping secrets, too. Like the fact that he’s been stalking her for a long time and that his father has just been executed in prison. How are Rebecca and Keller connected? You’ll have to piece their stories together to find out.
The author weaves the two stories together in a masterful way, jumping backwards and forwards in time, revealing a bit here and a bit there. We are left to work out what happened all those years ago that will have such an impact on so many lives. I love the intricate descriptions of the characters’ lives. We come to know and love these flawed characters and their twisted relationships. This is one book I can honestly say I didn't want to put down. It will keep you enthralled to the end.
Warnings: coarse language, violence, sex scenes.
Guest Post by the Author
Dark Deeds?
What kind of person writes psychological thrillers? And why?
What kind of person writes psychological thrillers? And why?
As Stephen King grew up, he was lonely and his father had left. King had nightmares about a local boy who was hit by a freight train. Additionally, the author had a host of phobias to contend with and was assailed by superstition too. So it’s not surprising perhaps that he found his way quickly to the horror genre.
But what about those of us who don’t mind walking under ladders, who check into hotel rooms numbered thirteen, without a second thought, and whose neighbours led uneventful lives (as far as we knew…)? Someone like me, for example. An optimistic girl, with ready humour and a life full of love, why am I writing about murder and mayhem?
Well, all cannot be entirely well, not even in people of the sunniest (and I’m not) disposition. One of our most common fears is being chased, hunted. I dream of this a lot. I have a recurring dream of being a child in a large house and someone is in there looking for me. My only recourse is to lure them away from the door and to run through it to freedom. (Actually, it’s a while since I’ve had that dream, but I expect I shall tonight!) This particular nightmare started around the time of a series of burglaries at home. I also regularly dream that men are killing me and I have to kill them first. And I do kill them, lots of them; not with a weapon but with my bare hands. I generally pick them up by their ankles and hurl them around my head, then dash their head against a building. This is not a scene I have used in fiction to date.
‘They’ say these terrifying dreamscapes are practice grounds, to equip ourselves for this actuality in our waking lives. Fortunately, I haven’t had to yet. And for this same reason, ‘they’ say, we like to watch horror (I don’t, only very occasionally because my son pleads for me to watch with him); that our minds need to examine and analyse life-threatening scenarios so that we might learn how to cope in such a situation. Of course, the more common explanation for lusting after horror on the page and on the screen, is simply the thrill, the adrenalin rush.
It’s certainly true that I address some of my own fears in writing psychological thrillers, but I address many, many other issues too. I get a strong sense of what is right for the storyline and I write towards that, rather than the other way around, i.e., incorporating a storyline which facilitates my inner gore. At least that’s what I thought. But now I’m not at all sure…
About the Author
Jenny is a novelist, screenplay writer and playwright. After a series of ‘proper jobs’, she realised she was living someone else's life and escaped to Gascony to make gîtes. Knee deep in cement and pregnant, Jenny was happy. Then autism and a distracted spine surgeon wiped out the order. Returned to wonderful England, to write her socks off.
Jenny would like to see the Northern Lights but worries that’s the best bit and should be saved till last. Very happily, and gratefully, settled with family.
She tries not to take herself too seriously.
Giveaway
Enter our exclusive giveaway for a chance to win an ebook copy of Hiding by Jenny Morton Potts.
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