The Judas Scar - Amanda Jennings - Guest Book Review

Published by Cutting Edge Press 

Guest review by Leah Moyse

About the novel:

Will and Harmony's seemingly idyllic marriage is left shattered after she loses a baby she didn't realise she wanted. While at a friend's party, she raises the subject of trying again, and Will's reaction leaves her hurt and confused.

Removing herself from the crowd, she encounters an enigmatic stranger whose advances she rejects, only to later discover that the handsome man is Will's childhood friend from boarding school, Luke.

When Will, struggling to confront the culture of bullying that marred his childhood, reveals a secret too painful for her to bear, Harmony is left caught between the husband she loves and the promises made by an obsessive stranger...

Leah's thoughts:

I would like to start by saying I am a huge fan of the publisher Cutting Edge Press. They really push the boundaries and provide engrossing fiction that can be gritty, dark and intelligent.

This is a story of a marriage and difficult childhoods. An interesting look at how the events of our childhood can shape our futures, sometimes for the better but sometimes leaving us damaged and permanently scarred. In addition how emotional damage can actually affect our future relationships, decisions we make or don't make and how really some things can haunt us forever.

I must admit to not particularly warming to the characters, but for me this added to the feeling of wondering what they are really capable of and how far they would go. I really loathed Luke with a passion, such a seemingly unfeeling man who would stop at nothing to get what he wants. What really happened all those years ago at boarding school, to make him this way?

In places shocking, I was thinking to myself did that really just happen. Equally however I found it to be an ultimately sad story in that we can never have our childhood back and have a different start in life.

I thought this book was dark, brooding and the tension amongst the pages was palpable. I feel as if I have been on a roller coaster of emotions and didn't know until the final pages where the destination was. A relatively short novel at under 300 pages, but so much happens and so many issues are tackled. Amanda Jennings is a very good writer indeed, one not to miss and I will certainly be getting a copy of her first book, Sworn Secret.

About the Author:

Amanda Jennings studied at Cambridge and has worked at the BBC. She is married with three children and lives in Berkshire. Her website is: www.amandajennings.co.uk

Many thanks to Leah for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library! Leah blogs at Reflections of a Reader, do visit and read her fab blog too!

Ninepins - Rosy Thornton

‘Didn’t every kid deserve a chance?’

Ninepins is the old tollhouse where Laura lives with her 12-year-old daughter Beth. Laura often rents out the pumphouse next to her house to students, but the newest resident is to be someone different, a 17-year-old girl named Willow, who has been in care, and has been recommended for the accommodation by her social worker, Vince.

Laura has reservations and Willow coming to live at the pumphouse, and is nervous as to how the new arrangement will work, and what sort of influence Willow may be on Beth. Beth herself is bringing more than her share of worries into Laura’s life too, having started secondary school and making new friends who Laura knows little about, but what she does know doesn’t please her and makes her anxious about Beth. For Beth, there is the struggle to find her place amongst the teenage girls at school, to fit in and develop friendships with all the accompanying pressures amongst girls at that age.

I loved this novel. I liked the immediacy with which we were drawn straight into the story and the setting. I felt I was immersed in the wildlife and landscape of the Cambridgeshire fens, very nearby to where I live; they are vividly brought to life as the backdrop of this story; the author illustrates both the beauty and the dangers of the place. I found the characters intriguing and believable, and the dialogue equally convincing and apt.

I felt that Rosy Thornton portrayed the love, the difficulties and confrontations between Laura and Beth very realistically, and depicted the strong, yet at times fraught, relationships between mothers and daughters very successfully. The author contrasts the loving, caring and concerned nature of Laura’s parenting of Beth, with her always having provided the necessities for a safe, warm welcoming home, even as a single-parent, with the at times ‘wonderful, magical, intoxicating’ behaviour of Willow’s mother, who nonetheless left Willow feeling that ‘She’d never just felt safe.’

There were poignant moments, in particular between Willow and Laura, as Laura discovers more about Willow’s younger years, and how unsettled life was for her with her mother, Marianne. There are so many times when we, as a reader, identify with elements of a novel, and this struck a chord with me, and I was moved by some of the passages, as Laura realised what life must have been like for Willow:

‘If Willow at times seemed older than her years, this might be the reason. If the mother could not be a mother, how should the child be a child?’

As both Laura and the reader learn more about Willow’s mother and her past, the tension and sense of foreboding builds.

It’s an absorbing story that I enjoyed returning to every time I picked the book up again, more than anything I think because of how much I was immersed in the setting of the novel and intrigued and convinced by the characters and the development of the relationships between them, whether it was those between parent and child, adult and young adult, or the elements of gentle romance and attraction between adults. This is the first novel I have read by this author, and it has certainly encouraged me to want to go back and dip into her earlier works. This is assured storytelling and a satisfying read. 

Reviewed by Lindsay Healy

Published by Sandstone Press

Thank you very much to the author for kindly sending me a copy of her novel to read and review.

You can visit the author's website here.