Review & Giveaway: The Dollhouse in the Crawlspace by Ellen Byerrum

The Dollhouse in the Crawlspace

by Ellen Byerrum

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GENRE: Suspense/Thriller

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BLURB:

If you lost your memories, would you lose your soul?

“In my memories, my eyes are always green.”

After a devastating accident, a young woman finds herself recovering in a memory research facility. Her eyes are brown; her memories are broken. Years of her life are blank, yet she remembers being two very different women, one called Tennyson, the other Marissa. If she can’t trust her memories or her own eyes, who can she trust? To save her sanity and her life, she begins a secret journal between the lines of Homer’s Odyssey—and her own harrowing odyssey into madness and murder. Lost among her shattered memories, can she find her true self?

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My Review:

I adore this book, I rarely read mystery books but this has really captured me. At first I did a little hard to read the story but after a few pages has become so compelling that I could hardly put it down, I could not wait to have a free moment to find out what would happen next. It 's so well written and full of suspense, the characters are well developed and likeable.It is well plotted and the ending to truly surprised me and did not see coming.
This was my first time reading a book by this author, and I can say with complete certainty that it will not be my last!
I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys mystery novels.

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EXCERPT:

In my memories, my eyes are always green.

As green as the dark and dangerous sea, my grandfather used to say. Mermaid’s eyes, he called them. Eyes that changed, from the color of seaweed, to sea glass, to the green of troubled water. Yet I was never troubled, when my eyes were green.

There are huge gaps of time, years, when I don’t remember anything about my life. Still, I am quite convinced that my eyes were always green.

Even in my double memories, they are green. Even though I seem to remember being two people, they are green. It doesn’t matter if I recall being a child with blond streaks in my braids, collecting shells with my grandfather at the stony edge of the sea, or if I think I was a dark-haired girl riding a new pony, under the watchful eye of my pretty mother. My eyes are always green.

These days the mirror tells me my eyes are not green. They are brown. As brown as leaves that die in the fall.

I’m writing down these words because I don’t know if tomorrow I will remember what I know today. I have too many memories. Like the memory of my eyes. But I also have memory losses. Great chunks of time are missing. Frankly, I’m terrified of losing more pieces of myself, no matter how small.

“Green eyes are a false memory, Tennyson,” according to Dr. Embry. “You never had green eyes.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Ellen Byerrum is a novelist, playwright, reporter, former Washington D.C. journalist, and a graduate of private investigator school in Virginia. The Dollhouse in the Crawlspace is her first suspense thriller, which introduces Tennyson Claxton, a woman with two sets of memories from two very different women.

Ellen also writes the Crime of Fashion mysteries, which star a savvy, stylish female sleuth named Lacey Smithsonian, a reluctant fashion reporter in Washington D.C. ("The City Fashion Forgot").Two of the COF books,Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover, were filmed for the Lifetime Movie Network and can occasionally be seen on odd dates and odd times in the middle of the night. The latest book in that series is Lethal Black Dress, but there will be more to come.

She has also penned a middle grade mystery, The Children Didn’t See Anything. She occasionally writes a newsletter that contains her latest publishing information.

You can find more about Ellen on her website at www.ellenbyerrum.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/EllenByerrum,

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/EllenByerrum

Facebook Author Page https://www.facebook.com/EllenByerrumBooks

http://www.amazon.com/Dollhouse-Crawlspace-Ellen-Byerrum-ebook/dp/B00WTT4ALU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Where are you from?

Colorado is where I’m originally from, and where I’m currently residing. However, I spent many years on the East Coast, in Alexandria, Virginia, and that’s where I feel most at home. I worked for quite a while as a reporter in Washington, D.C., which inspires most of the settings and plots in my books.

What is the first book you remember reading?

Oddly enough, I think it was the children’s book, The House That Jack Built. It was silly and it rhymed and I liked it. At one time, I could recite the whole thing.

What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

The original inspiration for The Dollhouse in the Crawlspace came from my relatives. My aunt and uncle and cousins moved into a new-to-them house. They discovered a dollhouse in their crawlspace, with lovely vintage doll furniture inside. It was fascinating, who put it there? Why? Was it intended to be a time capsule, a hidden message? Was it forgotten?  I kept it on mental file until I came up with characters and other plot elements. Memories and memory loss play a part in the plot, as well as the forgotten dollhouse, suspense and romance.

What is the hardest thing about writing?

Finding the time and concentration to write is always a challenge. I first started writing books while I had a full-time job and found I had to write after work, but never at home. If I went home, I was apt to take a nap and forget about the book. Instead, I would stop at the library or bookstore or coffee shop and write by hand for a couple of hours. Then I could work on the computer at home. I enjoy writing at these various places. For a change of scenery.

What else do you enjoy doing, when you're not writing?

Reading, of course! I like to take long walks, and I do water aerobics. I also enjoy going to movies and the theatre and getting together with friends.

What are you working on next?

I’m working on a novel set during the 1940s about a character related to a character in my Crime of Fashion series, called The Brief Luminous Flight of the Firefly. Also, another book in the COF series, The Masque of the Red Dress. Then, I’ll be writing a sequel to Dollhouse.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dollhouse-Crawlspace-Ellen-Byerrum-ebook/dp/B00WTT4ALU/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

Ellen Byerrum will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway