Blog tour: One Of The Good Guys

By

Welcome to the blog tour for One Of The Good Guys by Araminta Hall!

More about the book…

Cole is the perfect husband: a romantic, supportive of his wife, Mel’s career, keen to be a hands-on dad, not a big drinker. A good guy.

So when Mel leaves him, he's floored. She was lucky to be with a man like him.

Craving solitude, he accepts a job on the coast and quickly settles into his new life where he meets reclusive artist Lennie.

Lennie has made the same move for similar reasons. She is living in a crumbling cottage on the edge of a nearby cliff. It’s an undeniably scary location, but sometimes you have to face your fears to get past them.

As their relationship develops, two young women go missing while on a walk protesting gendered violence, right by where Cole and Lennie live. Finding themselves at the heart of a police investigation and media frenzy, it soon becomes clear that they don’t know each other very well at all.

More about the author…

Araminta Hall has worked as a writer, journalist and teacher.

Her first novel, Everything & Nothing, was published in 2011 and became a Richard & Judy read that year.

Her second, Dot, was published in 2013.

She teaches creative writing at New Writing South in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and three children.

My impressions…

When I saw that Araminta Hall had another book coming out, I was super excited. And rightly so. Her storytelling, her ability to create a world that engulfs the reader, is amazing. Not to mention the fact that her characters are developed in a way that makes you forget they are fictional. Mind you, in this case, the lines between fiction and reality are scarily blurred. Because it’s true that Cole, Mel and Lennie don’t exist in real life, but our world is full of people just like them. And the message that radiates from these pages – that the safety and safeguarding of women seems to be sadly remembered mostly when it’s too late – is 100% relevant and urgent. I loved the structure of the book: from the present to the past, and back to the present, with the same event told from different viewpoints. The famous ‘he said/she said’. Plus, newspaper articles, podcast transcripts, WhatsApp messages among friends and Twitter threads, which add more layers to the story and make the readers think even more, perhaps even doubt what they initially thought. Smart and suspenseful, just how I like it!

Three words to describe it. Twisty. Feminist. Thought-provoking.

Do I like the cover? I’m not sure it fits the vibe of the novel, but it is certainly eye-catching.

Have I read any other books by the same author? Yes, a few. I especially loved Our Kind of Cruelty.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“Italy in books” - reading challenge 2011

By
Image
Why this challenge? This year I’ve decided to host a reading challenge because I think that they are a brilliant idea. They help to make reading a more collective experience and are a great way to find out more about any particular author / genre / topic and get to know about books you might never have come across. I chose this topic because - as an Italian who has been living abroad for many years now - I feel the need to learn more about my home country and I’m curious to see the difference between the way it is portrayed by native Italians and others. The details of the challenge The challenge will run from January, 1st 2011 to December, 31st 2011 . The aim of the challenge is to read at least 12 books that are set in Italy. Whether written by Italian authors or not, it doesn’t matter. They don’t have to be set exclusively in Italy but this country needs to play a significant role in the book. The challenge can include non-fiction books about Italy. You can also review Italian lea
Read more

Book review: She’s Never Coming Back

By
Image
By Hans Koppel Translated by Kari Dickson Published by Sphere It is safe to say that my choice of reading material is not usually truculent. That’s why I surprised myself when I decided to read a novel whose front cover prominently displays a quote describing it as a ‘terrifying crime novel’. I started to read expecting the worse and - it being impossible to put the book down - a few hours later I was trying to understand what had hit me. Let’s be clear: I loved this book and I’m grateful to Sphere for publishing this Swedish novel by author Karl Petter Lidbeck who, being a children’s literature author, decided to have it published under the pen name of Hans Koppel. I can see why he doesn’t want to have the two genres mixing on the bookshelves! The plot is simple enough: one day after work, Ylva does not return home. When she hasn’t returned 24 hours later, her husband Mike starts to worry and calls the police. Ylva seems to have disappeared without a trace and, month after month, Mike
Read more

In conversation with... T.M. Logan

By
Image
Hi Tim ! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of The Catch ! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: The Catch is a psychological thriller about a father who becomes convinced his daughter is about to marry a man with terrible secrets. Terrified that his cherished only child is about to marry a man who is not what he seems, Ed sets out to uncover the truth - before it's too late. But as he delves deeper, he risks alienating everyone he loves and turning his whole family against him… Did you have the plot entirely figured out when you started writing the book or did it take an unexpected turn as the characters grew on the page? A: I had about two-thirds of the plot worked out in my head before I started, including some of the key turning points along the way. But the characters always bring out new elements to the story as I write it. I get to know the characters better during the writing – including how they relate to each other –
Read more