Blog tour: Mr Magenta

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Welcome to the blog tour for Mr Magenta by Christopher Bowden!

More about the book…

Stephen Marling thought he knew his aunt Flora.

But when he inherits her house in a quiet south London square a series of discoveries among her papers brings to light another person entirely.

Who, for example, is ‘Mr Magenta’ and what part did he play in her life?

In the process of uncovering the secrets of one life, Stephen is forced to re-evaluate his own and decide what he really wants.

Was he right to turn his back on Nancy Steiner, the young actress he met in New York, when he came home to take up his inheritance?

Interweaving past and present, the story takes him from a Brooklyn bookshop to a theatre in Marseille to a cottage on the east coast of England where the truth about Mr Magenta is finally revealed.

More about the author…

Christopher Bowden lives in south London.

His six previous novels are The Red House, The Blue Book, The Yellow Room, The Green Door, The Purple Shadow, and The Amber Maze, the first published in 2007.

My impressions…

When Stephen inherits his aunt’s house, he thinks he knows the kind of person she was… until he finds things he can’t explain, and thus embarks on a journey of discovery. I love the concept of getting to better know someone – or getting to know a different version of someone – via the things they leave behind, and I enjoyed trying to piece together all the clues he collects along the way. I was completely absorbed by the story, and thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I only wish I had liked Stephen more, but his hoarding tendencies gave me a mild case of anxiety, and his inability to make a single decision about his own life was incredibly frustrating. Still, we can’t love every single character in a book!

Three words to describe it. Mysterious. Intriguing. International.

Do I like the cover? Yes, but the location pictured doesn’t seem to be relevant to any of the book’s locations.

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, and I’m rather intrigued by the titles!

 

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