Review & Giveaway: The Secret Baby Room by D.D. Johnston

The Secret Baby Room

by D.D. Johnston

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BLURB:

Claire Wilson knows what she saw: on the eighth floor of a derelict tower block, a woman was bottle-feeding a baby. But why would anyone take a baby into a boarded-up tower block? In an area of Manchester plagued by unexplained tragedies, the only allies Claire can find are a pagan witch, a wild-child party girl, and a husband with too many secrets.

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My Review:

This romance is a psychological thriller interesting, a bit slow in the beginning but later it becomes much more smooth and intriguing.

Claire and her husband have just moved to a new city: she spends the day almost always home alone. She's still hurt to have suffered a miscarriage a few months before. After getting to know her two new and extravagant neighbors Morgana, a Wiccan mother of two children, and Lianne, the classic party girl with toy boy, feels even more troubled. Next to her house there is a new tower to be demolished because it is unsafe. Claire sees a woman nursing a baby artificially right on top of the tower: after a while the woman disappears. Claire is confused. Why is there a woman with a child? How did she get there? Her husband doesn't believe her. Claire has other visions of children and calls the police, they believe she is crazy. Claire doesn't give up and wants to find out what happens in the neighborhood. It 's just a fantasy of hers, the pain still strong for the child just lost or something strange is really happening? You have to read it to the end to find an answer.

All the characters are somewhat particularl, bizarre and extravagant but well developed: the husband hardly attract the sympathy of anyone.

It 's a good thriller, full of slang "English", it is not a book to read in one breath, but little at a time so as to understand it better

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EXCERPT:

On Sunday morning at 9:15 a.m., Claire was escorted to Interview Room 3. She was relieved to be out of the cell but self-conscious about her stale breath and unwashed body. Her jeans smelled of damp, and dried blood covered her right hand where she had grazed her knuckles kayaking.

           

And then it occurred to her, as she was waiting alone in the interview room, how ridiculous these thoughts were. What did it matter? So much of her life she had spent caring about the wrong things: what did it matter whether she had stale breath? What difference did it really make if her bra was visible through her shirt? Why did she care about her BMI or her… underarm fat. Underarm fat! Who even decided such a thing should be added to the catalogue of female worries? It was all absurd. She remembered that as she was being driven to the police station, her hands cuffed behind her back, among her many terrors was the thought that she might be strip-searched. As much as she feared the violence of the act, she had also worried because her legs were unshaved and it had been ages since she’d attended to her bikini line. What a moment at which to worry about depilation! ‘Who cares?’ she said aloud. ‘Who cares?’

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

D.D. Johnston’s first novel, Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs, was a Sunday Herald Book of the Year in 2011 and is published in Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov. His experimental second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, was a 2013 book of the year in The Morning Star, where it was described as “determinedly extraordinary”. He lives in Cheltenham, UK, and works at the University of Gloucestershire, where he is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing and a University Teaching Fellow. In his spare time he runs the OnlineWritingTips.com website.

http://ddjohnston.org

@dd_johnston

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Secret-Baby-Room-D-D-Johnston/dp/1909954187

http://onlinewritingtips.com

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

The author will be awarding a $30 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway