Someone Close to Home Blog Tour

GoodReads:

Talented pianist Megan Youngblood has it all – fame, fortune and Gideon.

But Gideon isn’t good enough for Megan’s ambitious, manipulative mother, whose meddling has devastating repercussions for Megan and for those close to her.

Now, trapped inside her own body, she is unable to communicate her needs or fears as she faces institutional neglect in an inadequate care home.

And she faces Annie. Sadistic Annie who has reason to hate her. Damaged Annie who shouldn’t work with vulnerable people.

Just how far will Annie go?

‘Someone Close To Home’ is a story of love, malice and deadly menace.

Book Information:
Paperback: 252 pages
Publisher: Ashford Carbonel Publishing (9 Dec. 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0995696608
ISBN-13: 978-0995696600
Amazon UK Link

My Review

Content/Trigger Warnings: Rape, sexual, emotional/mental, and physical abuse. Violence/murder, and elder/medical abuse.

This book, this was nothing like I expected! I thought it was going to be more of a thriller, but that’s not to say it’s not, it’s just, so much more than that.

The past and present collide as Megan Youngblood after suffering a stroke is put into a rather low funded care home by her two children. This does give her time to think about her past though, the journey that led her to this moment, especially as she’s left unable to communicate. She is under the mercies of the caregivers, some who are sweet and caring, some who treat it sim[ly as a job, and others. Others who use their position to abuse her and others in the home.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be anything new for Megan, her life has been rife with pain. She’s been under the care of those who would do her harm before, only this time she cannot even protest it if she wanted to.

Each chapter gives us the present and the past, and I was caught up in both timelines and it was almost weird to come upon them joining to just have the present but I’m so happy it was done this way, you see just how much Megan has been through. But I also feel as if she’d been through too much. It was a very hard and heavy read, as much as I loved it, it was not something I expected to make me so emotional; in the best and worst of ways haha, you can’t help but cry for Megan and her life, but I do think the ending made it all worthwhile, but, telling would be spoilers.

The main issue I had with this, and that’s not that it was a hard read, that’s just a warning that you will be probably too invested in Megan’s life, but that it felt disjointed between the ‘scarier’ thriller part and the rest of it.

I expected Annie to be featured more prominently given her role in the book, instead that huge plot of the story doesn’t come in till 70+ % through, so that was a bit of a shock to the system and by that time it made it feel like two different stories, but, the culmination of it all brings it all back on track.

Great, difficult read. Thank you to Anne Cater and the publisher for a chance to read and review this as part of my honest opinion. Four cups from me!

About the Author

Alex Craigie was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and all she can remember about it is that:

• it was written in pencil in a book with weights and measures on the back

• the two heroes were Prince Rupert and his brother (whose name was changed to Sam to facilitate the rhyming process.)      

• as writer, producer and director she ‘bagged’ the part of female lead. 

When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines and since then has fulfilled her ambition to write a novel.

Someone Close to Home has won two ‘Chill with a Book’ awards – The Reader’s Award and the Book of the Month Award.

Alex lives in a small village in Pembrokeshire, Wales, and knows that she and her husband are lucky to have their children and grandchildren living nearby. It’s often chaotic and noisy but these are her most treasured moments and she savours them – even if she’s reduced to an immovable heap after they’ve gone.  

As an independent author, without a big publishing machine behind her, she is very grateful to all the people who have found and bought her first book – and a huge thank you to those who’ve gone out of their way to write a review on Amazon or Goodreads. These reviews make a massive difference to ‘Indies’ and the positive ones encourage other readers to risk buying a copy.

What else can she say?  Nothing, really. Writing this personal promotion has been very, very hard and she needs to go away now and lie down in a darkened room, preferably with a big bar of chocolate…  

She looks forward to any contact from fellow lovers of books and any honest feedback is very welcome.

The Rest of the Tour