I feel like I've been very lucky recently with these book tours! It's been hard tearing myself away from my current goal of rereading every Sweet Valley High book (thank you Kindle Unlimited!), but Zoé at Zooloo's Book Tours has the magic touch with these books, and it's definitely worth leaving the Wakefield twins behind.
Today's review is From My Cold Dead Hands, which was a tension filled roller coaster from start to finish.
Blurb
Can a woman who has lost her memory piece together the truth about her family, her life, and a friend’s murder?
After waking up with amnesia in hospital, Cassie returns home to a life she doesn’t recognize. She gradually learns that dodgy associations from her old life have left her estranged from her husband and alienated from her children. Cassie no longer wants to be the person she was before—but breaking away from her past and from her wealthy family is not so simple.
Meanwhile, she still suffers confusion and experiences nightmares about an unknown man, while hearing from her friend Marcie that she had been having an affair. When the police dismiss her after she receives a frightening phone call, Cassie vows to uncover the truth.
But when a body is found, a series of revelations brings Cassie’s past into shocking clarity.
Review
It's worth starting off noting that Cassie's family are neo-Confederates and white supremacists, and that it does feature rather prominently in the story line as Cassie struggles with reconciling the person she believes she is now with the person she was before the accident. Although there is no violence or hate directly targeting BIPOC/Latinx people in the story, the rhetoric and beliefs are mentioned throughout as Cassie works through the views her fragmented family hold of her.
From the opening chapter, where Cassie introduced to the family she doesn't remember, to the end where the twists keep coming, the tension is constantly there. What happened to Cassie? Why does she have these other memories? And who is trying to kill her? The clues, in the form of snippets of recovered memory, were cleverly done, and just enough to keep me hanging out for more. The pacing worked really well too - not so fast that things got lost, but not so slow that all the built up tension was lost.
Lost memory is one of my favourite thriller tropes, and books like this are exactly why!
Author Bio
At the age of seventeen, having been told by her English Literature teacher to sit on her hands in lessons, as she spoke more eloquently with them than actual words, Hilly decided to prove her wrong.
It started with a bout of terrible poetry and finally culminated in the publication of her first novel, From My Cold Dead Hands. She is also a painter and ceramicist and has a lady shed in the middle of an organic fruit farm on a mountainside in southern Spain.
She lives with her musician partner and two rescue dogs.
Follow her at:
Twitter : https://twitter.com/Hilly_Barmby
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/hillyollie
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/HillyOllieBarmby
Website : www.hillybarmbyauthor.com
Buy Links - https://geni.us/m3uMEa
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