One Winter Morning by Isabelle Broom is her Best Novel Yet!

One Winter Morning is Isabelle Broom's best novel yet! It is in turns brilliant, fabulous, engaging, emotional, heart-rending, and beautiful.
Set around Christmas, it's not a traditional Christmas story with turkey, tinsel and mistletoe, because this December, Genie sets off to New Zealand to find her birth mother, Bonnie, but ends up finding much, much more.
It's nearly a year since her adoptive mother, Anna, died on Christmas Eve in an accident on Genie's horse, Sukie. Genie blames herself for the death of the mother she loved so much, and the horse the meant so much to her.  She's spent the last year unable to forgive herself or forget that fateful day. However, when David, her adoptive father, tells Genie that her birth mother is living in New Zealand, she just has to go.
Isabelle Broom's beautiful description of this special country makes you feel that you are really there and adds a deep dimension to the story. Also, the characters are believable and you feel that you really know them and really care how things work out for them.
Apart from New Zealand, being an important background to the novel, there are also the stables both there, and in England, where the horses add another dimension to the storytelling.
This book reminds me of the earlier ones by JoJo Moyes, and Isabelle Broom is proving to be another such accomplished writer.

The Blue by Lucy Clarke - A Tense and Suspenseful Novel with the Exotic Backdrop of the Pacific Ocean

I loved The Sea Sisters and A Single Breath both by Lucy Clarke.
In the first, set in Bali, Katie is trying to unravel the truth about her sister's death, and in the second, Eva is finding out about the life of Jackson, her husband who's drowned, back where he used to live in Tasmania. You can read my reviews here and here. Therefore, as I liked them so much, I couldn't wait to read The Blue, set on a boat of that name sailing from the Philippines via Palau to New Zealand.
As in Lucy Clarke's first two books, The Blue starts off with a death. This time it's one of the travellers on the boat, whose body is floating in the sea.
The first two books explored the relationships between sisters and between husband and wife; this one explores and tests the lifelong friendship between Lana and Kitty.
It's told from Lana's point of view: 'Then' and 'Now', using the past and present tenses to easily identify when the action is taking place. It also beautifully encapsulates the wide ocean, and the confines of the small yacht with the six wanderers/adventurers on board; some sailing to something, some sailing away.

The crew are: Aaron, from New Zealand, who owns the boat; Denny also from New Zealand; the Canadian girl, Shell; Heinrich, the German; Joseph, the loner whom they'd picked up on Christmas Eve after they'd found him sleeping rough on a beach; and Lana and Kitty who'd decided to come to the Philippines on the spin of a globe.
There is obviously the mystery to solve of the drowned person, but also the reasons why each crew member is sailing and the complex relationships between each one which affect the outcome of the story.
I loved this tense and suspenseful novel with the exotic backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.
Lucy is now working on her, as yet untitled, fourth book which is due for release in Spring 2017, I can't wait!

A Postcard from New Zealand featuring After the Fall by Charity Norman

Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand and can be translated as the Land of the Long White Cloud. We visited most of it from Milford Sound in the south to Auckland in the north. However, one place I wished we had seen was Napier, in Hawke's Bay on North Island, where After the Fall is set.

This novel by Charity Norman gripped me from the beginning when one of Martha McNamara's twin sons has fallen from the balcony of their new home in New Zealand, and we don't know if he  is alive or dead.

We see the story through Martha's eyes, but she's not letting on how or why he fell. She says he was sleepwalking, but was he? The story is told in a series of flashbacks, interspersed with Martha waiting by her son, Finn's, bed in hospital, and being questioned by Social Services.
Her husband, Kit, an Irish artist, wanted a new start in New Zealand because his advertising business failed in the UK, so Martha has given up everything to bring Sacha, her teenage daughter, and her twins with Kit, Finn and Charlie, to live in a remote farmhouse above Napier.
At first, all is ok, but then why do things keep disappearing? Is it the Patupaiarehe spirits that the Maori people believe live in the woods? And what is Sacha getting up to with her new friends? Also, who is her father? Another clever aspect of the book is that Charity Norman has Martha's mother, long passed away, whispering in her ear as her conscience. Rather like an 'I told you so!' Jiminy Cricket. I just had to keep reading!
Have you read After the Fall? What did you think of it?

To celebrate the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, whether it rains or shines, I'm offering a FREE DOWNLOAD of my book of Twelve Super Summer Stories,  Postcards and Suntan Cream from 8am Friday, 3rd May 2013 to 8am Tuesday 7th May 2013, British Summer Time. Just click on the book cover at the top of the page!

50 Shades of Grey returned to Tauranga Library with Teeth Marks gives me a Mini Byline in Writers' Forum!

On a recent trip to New Zealand, I read an article in the Herald on Sunday about a copy of 50 Shades of Grey being returned to Tauranga Library with teeth marks! I sent a report of it to Writers' Forum for their 'newsFRONT' page, and it was printed in the latest issue!


Just a short piece, but it's great to see my name in the magazine!

If would like to hear more about my trip, watch out for my blog over the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, when I will be posting more about the places I visited and offering a FREE DOWNLOAD of my book of summery short stories, Postcards and Suntan Cream!