Blog tour – The Liar’s Daughter by Claire Allan @ClaireAllan @AvonBooksUK @SanjanaCunniah #TheLiarsDaughter

I’m delighted to be finishing the tour for The Liar’s Daughter by Claire Allan. Thank you to Sanjana Cunniah at Avon for inviting me to take part. Before I give you my review, here’s the blurb.

The Blurb

No one deserves to be taken before their time. Do they?

Joe McKee – pillar of the Derry community – is dead. As arrangements are made for the traditional Irish wake, friends and family are left reeling at how cancer could have taken this much-loved man so soon.

But grief is the last thing that Joe’s daughter Ciara and step-daughter Heidi feel. For they knew the real Joe – the man who was supposed to protect them and did anything but.

As the mourners gather, the police do too, with doubt being cast over whether Joe’s death was due to natural causes. Because the lies that Joe told won’t be taken to the grave after all – and the truth gives his daughters the best possible motive for killing him…

My Review

This is the first book I’ve read by Claire Allan but it definitely won’t be the last. Caring for a relative with a terminal illness is never easy. For Heidi, it’s doubly so as she’s never really got on with her stepfather, Joe. She’s not on friendly terms with her step-sister, Ciara, either and the feeling’s mutual. Ciara has never forgiven her father for leaving her and her mother. It’s a powder keg of hostility just waiting to explode.

This is written in different points of view and in the past as well as the present. I didn’t find it confusing to read and really enjoyed seeing the story through different characters’ eyes. I’m writing this review the day after Storm Ciara and I have to say that Ciara in The Liar’s Daughter is pretty stormy herself! Heidi on the other hand is a complete mouse in comparison but there’s a lot going on below the surface. When Heidi finally took a stand to defend herself I wanted to cheer.

As the book is set in Derry, Northern Ireland, it was interesting to see the Irish Catholic tradition of wakes and having the body at home for people to pay their respects. The community expectation of this adds to the tension when Joe’s body isn’t allowed back straight away. We may not hear directly from the locals but we’re aware of the ripple effect of gossip spreading throughout the town.

There are some distressing issues in The Liar’s Daughter but Claire Allan has handled them in a very sensitive manner. Despite the darkness that Ciara and Heidi have to face, there’s a sense of freedom and hope as well.

I was completely drawn into the lives of these two very different women as they battled their demons. The Liar’s Daughter is going to stay with me for quite some time. An emotional, heart-breaking read.

You can buy the book here.

 

About the Author

Claire Allan is a Northern Irish author who lives in Derry~Londonderry.
She worked as a staff reporter for the Derry Journal for 17 years, covering a wide array of stories from court sessions, to the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, health and education and human interest features.
She wrote her first novel in 2006, to mark her 30th birthday and it (Rainy Days and Tuesdays) was subsequently published and became an instant bestseller in 2007.
Claire wrote seven further women’s fiction novels between 2007 and 2015. In 2016 (when she turned 40) she decided to change genre and try her had at domestic noir. Her first domestic noir novel, Her Name Was Rose was published by Avon/ HarperCollins in 2018 and became a bestseller in the UK, Canada, Australia and was a USA Today bestseller.
It was subsequently nominated in the Dead Good Reader Awards in 2019.
Claire has followed up on the success of Her Name Was Rose with Apple of My Eye and Forget Me Not.
Her next novel, The Liar’s Daughter, will be published in 2020.

She is working on a fifth psychological thriller at present.

Claire still lives in Derry with her husband, two children, two cats and a very spoiled puppy.

 

 

 

 

Blog Tour – The Holdout by Graham Moore @MrGrahamMoore @Tr4cyF3nt0n @orion_crime #TheHoldout

My turn on the tour today for The Holdout by Graham Moore. I’d like to thank Orion and Tracy Fenton for inviting me to take part. Before I give you my review, here’s the blurb.

 

The Blurb

One juror changed the verdict. What if she was wrong?

‘Ten years ago we made a decision together…’

Fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, vanishes on her way home from school. Her teacher, Bobby Nock, is the prime suspect. It’s an open and shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed.

Until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, persuades the rest of the jurors to vote not guilty: a controversial decision that will change all of their lives forever.

Ten years later, one of the jurors is found dead, and Maya is the prime suspect.

The real killer could be any of the other ten jurors. Is Maya being forced to pay the price for her decision all those years ago?

My Review

I’ve been called for jury service twice and I couldn’t do it either time. The first time I was 18 and about to take my A-Levels. The second time I was 37 weeks pregnant. No one wanted to risk that one! I have been a witness though and it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do. I was allowed to visit the courtroom beforehand and was given some advice – when you answer a question, direct your answer to the jury. They are the most important people in the room.

The Holdout is set in California so the justice system is a little different from the UK. But the idea of a jury – twelve people judging the suspect – remains the same. I’ve often wondered how jurors cope with horrible cases, especially murder. We start to get an idea of the toll it takes in The Holdout.

Maya Seale is a high-flying defence lawyer. Her jury service experience inspired her to enter the law. Others were not so fortunate and lost their jobs because of that time. Another, Rick Leonard, became so obsessed by the case, he dedicated ten years of his life searching for the truth. Now, a TV programme wants to do a reunion with the jurors from one of the most controversial trials ever. An open-and-shut case against Bobby Nock. Abundantly clear to all of America that he was guilty. The victim’s body was never found but the evidence against him was overwhelming. Only Maya thought he was innocent. And one by one, she talked the others round. But Rick has new evidence that he plans to share on the TV programme. However, before he has his moment of glory, Rick is found dead in Maya’s room. And now, she has to defend herself.

The story switches between Now with Maya and Then with the other jurors. It might be my fault for mostly reading this late at night, but I didn’t always find it easy to keep up with all the characters. There are ten other jurors to look at as well as the victim’s family. Plus Bobby Nock himself. So you do have to stay on your toes with this book.

This novel has a cinematic feel to it which isn’t surprising as Graham Moore is a scriptwriter and wrote the brilliant The Imitation Game. I’d love to see this as a film or TV series. With tense courtroom scenes and Maya’s charisma, it would work very well on screen.

There are two questions that need answering in this story – who killed Rick Leonard and who killed Jessica Silver? And both of these threads are utterly compelling. We get to see both sides of the justice system in this story with Bobby Nock’s past trial and Maya trying to defend herself in the present day. And I can honestly say I did not guess the outcome of either case!

Although this is primarily a story, it does look at issues such as race bias in trials (especially murder), how best to deal with sex offenders after release and domestic abuse. This isn’t done in a preachy way but is subtly threaded throughout the narrative.

I think The Holdout is meant to be a standalone but I would happily read more about Maya Seale, kick-ass defence lawyer. A tense and compelling read.

You can buy the book here.

 

About the Author

Graham Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Days of Night and The Sherlockian, and the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game, which also won a Writers Guild of America Award for best adapted screenplay and was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe. Moore was born in Chicago, received a BA in religious history from Columbia University in 2003, and now lives in Los Angeles.