ramblingmads

Renowned photo-journalist Jude Montgomery arrives in Glasgow in 2014, in the wake of the failed Scottish independence referendum, and it’s clear that she’s searching for someone.

Is it Anna Mason, who will go on to lead the country as First Minister? Jamie Hewitt, guitarist from eighties one-hit wonders The Hyptones? Or is it Rabbit – Jude’s estranged foster sister, now a world-famous artist?

Three apparently unconnected people, who share a devastating secret, whose lives were forever changed by one traumatic night in Phoenix, forty years earlier…

Taking us back to a school shooting in her Texas hometown, and a 1980s road trip across the American West – to San Francisco and on to New York – Jude’s search ends in Glasgow, and a final, shocking event that only one person can fully explain…

David F. Ross was born in Glasgow in 1964 and has lived in Kilmarnock for over 30 years. He is a graduate of the Mackintosh School of Architecture at Glasgow School of Art, an architect by day, and a hilarious social-media commentator, author and enabler by night. His debut novel The Last Days of Disco was shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Award, and optioned for the stage by the Scottish National Theatre. All five of his novels have achieved notable critical acclaim and There’s Only One Danny Garvey, published in 2021 by Orenda Books, was shortlisted for the prestigious Saltire Society Prize for Scottish Fiction Book of the Year. David lives in Ayrshire.

My thoughts: this is a blackly comic tale of roads converging, life changing events and secrets. Jude’s journey to Glasgow is a lifetime in the making in many ways, she’s not had it easy, and has some things to settle. But before that we need to go on tour with The Hyptones, and learn a bit more about Jude’s life and the moments that changed it.

A chance encounter at a gig going very wrong sends Jude on a lifelong mission of sorts, as she becomes a talented photojournalist in New York, haunted always by the moment Jamie Hewitt, guitarist of The Hyptones possibly saved her life, and by their one hit record.

That final trip to Scotland, partly to trace her late Glaswegian father, but mostly to find out what happened to the band and more specifically Jamie, is very powerful and moving in many ways. Fame dealt the members a pretty bad hand, well and Anna Mason – soon to be First Minister (replacing Nicola Sturgeon in the plot), daughter of a very dodgy man and the woman holding most of The Hyptones hostage financially.

But Jude isn’t easily swayed, she tracks down the members, a journalist called David F. Ross (hmmm) who wrote a staggeringly bleak article that has Madonna’s lawyers all over him, and AnnaFuckingBelle Mason too. But will she make it to lunch with her long separated foster sister, artist Rabbit? Or will the madness and sadness of The Hyptones get her too?

It’s gripping and unputdownable and dark and rather marvellous, from Texas to San Francisco, New York to Glasgow. One heck of a ride and with Dashboard Elvis there for it all.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Laura Robinson can’t be doing with people. She understands the theory but seems to have failed the practical. One day she receives the gift of a lobster. The fact that no one else can see it is less astonishing than what it allows her to see – visions of people’s inner motivations and torments. Laura goes from knowing nothing about people, to knowing everything. Using her new superpower Laura finally gets the life her mother always wanted. But is she happy? To distract herself from that question, she sets out to pay her gift forward, with Lobster’s help. It’s tough saving the world but it’s simpler than dealing with the things Lobster is showing her about her own life. Must she really face why her father left and what happened to her as a child? She has been living underwater and it’s time to come up for air.

I learn for a living and write for fun. An extrovert by nature, for some reason I very much enjoy closeting myself in a room with imaginary people and letting them surprise me with what they say and do. Having worked in mental health improvement for many years I write about the struggles that people face and the strength they show in living with and overcoming them. 

I’m a single mum to the best thing I have ever done and a grateful resident of Scotland for over 25 years. I’m surrounded by a community of writers who have helped me achieve my dreams of seeing my work in print. This is my second book.

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My thoughts: Laura isn’t very happy, she’s better alone, or so she thinks. But when a little Lobster only she can see appears on her shoulder, showing her the truth about people, she relents and starts to let people in.

By doing so she also recovers the truth about something terrible that happened when she was a child, something she’d been told was imaginary. But in learning it really happened, can she find the strength to rebuild her broken relationship with her dad and sister? Will she trust people and maybe try to be happy?

I liked the idea of a little lobster pal on your shoulder, showing you the hidden bits of people, helping out with the emotional stuff. I struggle to read people too and get things wrong sometimes. Laura opens up because of the lobster and finds she can be happy and not just go through the motions.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

When sound designer Su, a divorced mother of one daughter, falls in love with Jeremy, a widowed father of two sons, they want to build a new life together. As neither of their houses in Worcester is big enough for a family of five, they decide to build a dream home in farmland outside the city.

For Su, it’s an opportunity to heal the past wounds of betrayal and loss, while failed entrepreneur Jeremy sees a chance to finally impress his overbearing father. But with financial misjudgements, secret transgressions and lies creating cracks where this new family attempts to blend into one, will they ever be able to cement their ‘happily ever after’?

Alison Jean Lester was born in the US and has also lived for years in the UK, Singapore and Japan. She is the author of novels Yuki Means Happiness, Lillian on Life, Glide, poetry, short stories, plays, and non-fiction books on communication. She currently lives in Worcestershire, England.

 My thoughts: this clever book charts the high points and the intense lows of a relationship in a blended family. Su is a sound engineer and mother of one teenage girl. Jeremy is slightly feckless and has two sons – Ned and Tom. Ned is still young enough to need a mother, while Tom is dealing with the drama of being a teenage boy. Su falls in love with these boys and when her and Jeremy’s relationship falls apart, it is leaving not only the house they’ve built, but the almost stepsons she struggles with.

Jeremy’s unbelievably stupid actions cost him everything, he throws away love, happiness and family by acting appallingly. He’s a bit of a child in many ways, living off an inheritance, he’s never really worried about how to pay for things or getting a job. Su has been supporting them while he “project manages” the house build. Only she has no idea about the amount of debt he’s got into – the bit where he breaks and then throws away a lamp that cost over £1000 made me gasp in genuine horror. What an insane waste of money.

The final straw is awful, the secrets Su discovers hidden on his laptop will make you feel a bit sick. He’s not a murderer, but what he was contemplating is really grim. I can totally understand Su’s immediate reaction and anger. Her hurt too, this is a man she trusted, she loved and who abused that.

As an examination of a modern relationship, this is an intelligent and very 21st century book. The children are the ones who lose the most, especially angry, confused Ned, who doesn’t remember his biological mother (she died when he was very young) and now seems about to lose Su, who he calls Mummy. Compelling and at times painful reading.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.