LibriAmoriMiei: Review & Giveaway: Looking for Charlotte by Jennifer Young

giovedì 25 giugno 2015

Review & Giveaway: Looking for Charlotte by Jennifer Young

Looking for Charlotte

by Jennifer Young

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BLURB:

Divorced and lonely, Flora Wilson is distraught when she hears news of the death of little Charlotte Anderson. Charlotte’s father killed her and then himself, and although he left a letter with clues to her grave, his two-year-old daughter still hasn’t been found. Convinced that she failed her own children, now grown up and seldom at home, Flora embarks on a quest to find Charlotte’s body to give the child’s mother closure, believing that by doing so she can somehow atone for her own failings.

As she hunts in winter through the remote moors of the Scottish Highlands, her obsession comes to challenge the very fabric of her life — her job, her friendship with her colleague Philip Metcalfe, and her relationships with her three children.

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My Review:

This mystery-woman fiction is very touching and profound, tackles sensitive issues such as coping with a death, the difficulty of overcoming the syndrome of abandonment, the strength and the courage to start again, forgiveness.

It's the story of two mothers who have had the misfortune to choose the wrong man. Flora has been abandoned by her husband and had to grow by itself three children. Now that they are great, have all gone from her. Worse still has gone to Suzanne: her husband was a boy full of problems, when their daughter was born he felt neglected and has done a horrible thing, he killed her daughter of only two years and then committed suicide. His body was found but not that of little Charlotte. He left a note with the instructions on the site where he killed her but police searches were in vain. Flora is very affected by this case and try to help to find the body hopes to be able in part to appease her restlessness, her dissatisfaction. She will face a trip very exhausting physically but also psychologically very hard: alone in the middle of nowhere necessarily have to deal with her inner demons. Will she find the body of the little girl?

The author has created two great protagonists: two women have never met but share the desire to find the body of little Charlotte. Flora is very alone: from the first pages we perceive her need for affection, her desire to love and be loved. Her children now have their lives but what it costs them to make a call to their mother than the day of her birthday? Only the youngest child has left a brief message on the answering machine. Try to assuage her sadness with the help of the friendship of Philip. But he has not yet overcome the pain of the loss of his wife, even though many years have passed. Suzanne must face the greatest pain, the loss of a son: she feels guilty and wondering if she could do something to avoid it. If only she could find the body of her child. Fortunately, it is surrounded by dear friends who are trying to support and comfort her.

It 's really good written. It is very realistic and is so addictive that once started is hard to put down. I really liked the final.

Highly recommended

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EXCERPT:

She thought she knew the place where Alastair Anderson had left his car, and found it easily enough. Under her fingers the map was a flat web of never-parallel lines, of ugly pock-marking that told of steep, loose rocks and inhospitable terrain, just the type of place they used to walk. Somewhere up here, Charlotte Anderson was buried. Carried there, already dead? Or walked there and then killed? Surely neither was realistic; surely they would have found her, with their dogs and their mountain rescue helicopters scouring the ground for new scars, and all the rest of the equipment they had at their disposal.

Looking at the map had been a mistake. It was obvious now. Besides, she couldn’t see it any more; all she could see was the image of Suzanne Beauchamp, that beautiful face with the cold façade, like a wax death mask from Madame Tussaud’s. More poignant, of course, since it must hide a struggle, a struggle to conceal or to suppress a deadly mixture of grief and guilt.

‘Go away!’ she said softly to this mirage of a grieving woman, a little afraid of its power. ‘Go away!’ And then, in the only defence left to her, she began to fold the map away.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

I live in Edinburgh and I write romance and contemporary women’s fiction. I’ve been writing all my life and my first book was published in February 2014, though I’ve had short stories published before then. The thing that runs through all my writing is an interest in the world around me. I love travel and geography and the locations of my stories is always important to me. And of course I love reading — anything and everything.

Links

Tirgearr Publishing

http://tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Young_Jennifer/looking-for-charlotte.htm

Amazon UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00UEVPWIK

Amazon US

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00UEVPWIK/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00UEVPWIK&linkCode=as2&tag=tirgeapubli09-20&linkId=BCEIBFFNYTFZ5XK5

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/526032

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/jenniferyoungauthor

Twitter