I am pleased to be welcoming Valerie Keogh to Novel Kicks. She’s here with the blog tour for her novel, The Lodger.

She’s in your home…

Leigh Simons can’t say for sure what made her do it. A moment of madness, perhaps, but when the young, loud and gorgeous waitress at her favorite coffee shop reveals she is homeless, Leigh offers her the empty room in her house.

In your head…

Gina is the perfect lodger; Leigh, lonely and frustrated with her life, becomes infatuated with the woman – her boldness, her zeal. If only Leigh could be more like Gina…

And missing without trace.

So when Leigh returns from a work trip she’s shocked to find Gina missing. Where could the young woman have gone…and why?

Leigh fears that something terrible has happened – why else would Gina leave her?

But as she sets out to find her missing lodger, what Leigh discovers changes everything she knows about Gina….and her own life, too.

*****

When Leigh discovers that a waitress in her favourite coffee shop is becoming homeless, she offers up her spare room, a decision she instantly regrets.

However, when Leigh gets back from a week away, Gina has gone. Vanished without a trace.

This was my introduction to Valerie Keogh’s novels and the idea for this book really intrigued me so I was excited to get started.

It’s going to be quite hard to talk about this book without giving away spoilers but I’m going to try. Here goes…

Leigh is an interesting character. I got the feeling that she held a lot of herself back, being the person her boyfriend, Matt wanted her to be.

She is a lot braver than she thinks, especially when she eventually decides to speak up against a well liked male colleague. She is someone to admire in that respect.

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