Tag: contemporary fiction

NY RESOLUTIONS – THE PLAN

Exercise 6 times a week

Have sex once a month min. (counts as exercise)

Delete Tim’s number

Move out of home TO LONDON (career??)

Make more friends

Be better

New Year’s Day is the ultimate cliché for Scarlett: hangover, check feeling weepy, check broken sense of self, check check check.

Jobless and stuck living at home with an academic mother who has no time for pep-talks, the one saving grace for Scarlett is that her friend, Billie, still works at the pub down the road. But even the pub is losing its appeal.

Desperate to do something, she moves to London with no plan, no money and nowhere to stay.

Unsurprisingly, she finds herself crashing on her ex-boyfriend’s sofa with all of her terrible life choices for company.

It’s after Scarlett starts interning at a modelling agency that she takes her first step to becoming something – but it’s also her first step to becoming something else. Each terrible decision she makes leads to another and her life begins to spiral.

But people are starting to know her; she’s starting to become someone. And surely it’s better to be someone – even if it’s someone you hate?

With a vein of dark humour at its core, The High Moments offers an astute, often stark look at the fashion industry and the issues you can face as a woman in your twenties – fans of Girls and Emma Jane Unsworth’s Animals will love this.

Sara-Ella Ozbek is a London-bred author of South African and Turkish descent.

After graduating from the University of Exeter with a BA in English Literature, she interned at Vogue magazine and subsequently fell into a job at a modelling agency.

After six exciting, if somewhat draining, years as an agent, she left to pursue a career in writing. She attended the New York Film Academy screenwriting programme then went to Los Angeles where she joined the hustle of the screenwriters.

Out of the frustration and misery came her first novel, The High Moments.

Aside from the novel, she has written non-fiction for titles including Because Magazine, Suitcase, Tatler, Drugstore Culture, Voyage D’Etudes and Soho House Notes.

My thoughts:

Wryly funny, and full of the mistakes you make in your twenties, this reminded me of the girls I used to know, all now grown up and sensible thirty-somethings, but formerly disaster prone, panic driven and messy like Scarlett.

First jobs, falling in love with the wrong men (and women), spending entire paychecks on shoes (whoops, that one was me) and desperately trying to work out where they belong. I didn’t work in fashion but I definitely understood Scarlett.

I reckon anyone who’s ever been young and chaotic will find some empathy for Scarlett, desperate to move out of her judgmental mum’s house and the small Devon town they live in, to grow up and be Someone.

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

My thoughts:

This was like a big hug in a book, the bond between Livvy and Hannah might have been stretched thin but it rebounds when they’re reunited and as Livvy starts to open up about the years they’ve been apart, it grows stronger.

A book about making mistakes and mending fences, finding your place and a bookshop! They say you can never go home again, but you can if you live on Hope Street! *I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.

Because there’s never enough time to say goodbye…

Sylvia knows that she’s running out of time. Very soon, she will exist only in the memories of those who loved her most and the pieces of her life she’s left behind.

So she begins to write her husband a handbook for when she’s gone, somewhere to capture the small moments of ordinary, precious happiness in their married lives. From raising their wild, loving son, to what to give their gentle daughter on her eighteenth birthday – it’s everything she should have told him before it was too late.

But Sylvia also has a secret, one that she’s saved until the very last pages. And it’s a moment in her past that could change everything…

My thoughts:

A moving and bittersweet story of a family, its endings and beginnings. Sylvia is dying and her children are still young, her husband doesn’t know all the ins and outs of their routines, what their favourite foods are, the fact she keeps a double of their daughter’s stuffed toy hidden away.

So she writes to him, she reminds him of their beginnings, of the births of their children, of how they started out, to ease the pain of saying goodbye.

This was so painful to read but at the same time so tender and full of love that I couldn’t put it down. It lingers with you, the reader, that total love of a mother for her children, a wife for her husband.

She also writes letters to her mother and sister, keen to repair the cracks in their relationships, knowing her children will need them as they navigate a motherless existence.

This is an incredibly impressive debut novel, full of heart and incredible depth of feeling.

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

A family of billionaire grifters. A girl seeking true love. A con she didn’t see coming. Beautiful, sensitive Charlotte never fit in her family of American grifters.

Determined to make her own way in the world, she sets out for New York City with a new identity, certain no one will discover that she’s a Carrows. Wealthy. Powerful. Elite.

With anonymity comes the freedom to love. And to be loved for herself, not her money. She finds that in David Torres, her college boyfriend at NYU. But what will David do once he discovers he’s been dating a Carrows? Nothing good.

The heartbreaking devastation that David brings leaves Charlotte estranged from her family and alone. Or so she thinks.

With her mother’s help, they set out to right a grievous wrong.

Can they repair their broken family? Can they bring David to justice?

Charlotte McGee is the first book in the Carrows Family Chronicles series of billionaire romance suspense novels.

If you like exciting capers filled with glamour and romance, Book One will leave you delighted and eager for more!

Annabelle Lewis lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota

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My thoughts:

This was a fun read about family, revenge and being yourself. Charlotte is ashamed of her wealthy family of grifters and changes her last name so she isn’t immediately connected to them.

Moving to New York for college gives her a new start and she falls in love with David, an inspiring artist.

David isn’t as innocent as he thinks and takes advantage of Charlotte and her family.

Several years later the Carrows decide to fix things and go after David.

I enjoyed this story and really liked Charlotte and Pinky, less so Carey and Henry.

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

Marlena caught the eye of one of the richest, hottest guys on campus, Preston. But when her attention shifts, and she falls in love with a hometown boy, Jimmy, she finds out that Preston is also deeply disturbed.

What follows is a life-changing evening out on Telephone Road, and Marlena knows she will never be the same when she takes matters into her own hands.

Justice has a new meaning. It’s called revenge.

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Ann has been a writer since junior high, but to pay the bills she has waited tables, delivered newspapers, cleaned other people’s houses, taught school, and had a stint as a secretary in a rock-n-roll radio station.

She also worked as a 911 operator and a police dispatcher.

Her fiction began to win awards during her college days. Since then she’s published several short stories, novels, and novellas. She’s always reading and always writing, but even if she never sold another story, Ann would not stop writing. For her it’s a necessity, like breathing. Most of the time, it even keeps her sane.

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My thoughts:

This is a powerful story about surviving a terrible crime and finding a way to rebuild and move on.

Marlena has a strong support system of family and friends around her and their strength helps her recover and rebuild her life after being assaulted, but her assailant remains free so she decides to fight back.

Moving and at times shocking, Telephone Road stays with you long after the last page.

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