Blog Tour: Lyrebird by Cecelia Ahern – Review
Welcome to Cecelia Ahern and her blog tour for her new novel, Lyrebird which was released on 3rd November by Harper Collins.
Solomon is part of a documentary crew. He, along with his girlfriend, Bo and their colleague Rachel, return to the farm of a set of twins (that have previously been subjects for one of their documentaries) for a funeral.
When exploring the area around the edge of the farm, Solomon finds Laura hiding in the woods. Laura has been living a solitary life. She’s such a secret no one knows she exists. They discover that Laura processes an extraordinary gift and soon, they have taken her back to Dublin.
Can Laura adjust to life in a big, loud city or will she feel even more trapped?
First of all could I just take a moment to gush about the cover of this book. It is beautiful. I loved the fact that when this book arrived, it came with very pretty feathers. Now I’ve read it the feathers make more sense but they were pretty all the same.
This book was so easy to fall into. It didn’t take me long to read as I couldn’t stop reading. There is something about Cecelia’s writing that just draws me in. There’s such a magic to it. Where Rainbows End still remains one of my favourite novels.
The plot is interesting and explores themes like the pitfalls of fame and reality TV, love and trying to discover who you are.
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Selection of New Book Releases
Hello everyone. I hope you’re all enjoying your Thursday so far. The temperature has certainly dropped today hasn’t it.
Summer has gone and we say hi to dark mornings, cold hands and scraping of the windscreen on cars.
The one thing I do love about this time of year is that when I do make it home after work or whatever, I can curl up in the chair with a blanket and a lovely mug of hot chocolate and read into the night.
As it’s Thursday, there is a new batch of book releases too. Here are four of the books released today that I am looking forward to reading.
Rather Be The Devil sees the return of Rebus and is the latest novel by Ian Rankin. It’s released today by Orion. I can remember seeing a documentary on the BBC about Ian Rankin and his writing process. It was so interesting. It was also very encouraging for a new writer like me as I got to see someone as fantastic as this author have the same insecurities as me when writing his books and he just sits down and gets on with it. I hope it does someday get repeated.
This book is the twenty first novel in the Rebus series. The general gist is that it has been forty years but for John Rebus, the death of Maria Turquand still prays on his mind. She was murdered in a hotel on the same evening a famous singer and his entourage were staying. Maria’s body has never been found.
Meanwhile, young pretender Darryl Christie is left weakened and vulnerable after a vicious attack and an enquiry into a major money laundering scheme threatens his position.
Danielle Steel also has a new novel out today. The Award has just been released by Bantam Press.
Gaelle is sixteen when the German army occupies France in 1940. Her father and brother are killed in a matter of months and her mother descends into madness.
Gaelle becomes a member of the resistance. She fearlessly delivers Jewish children to safety underneath the eyes of the Gestapo.
Toward the end of the war, she tries to help save France’s art treasures but when the war draws to a close, she is accused of collaboration. She flees to Paris and then to New York to start a new life as a model, a wife and a mother.
The ghosts of her past however are always near.
The third book out today is Lyrebird by Cecelia Ahern. This has been released by Harper Collins. I have actually read this book already (I will be reviewing it as part of the Lyrebird blog tour on 8th November so watch this space.)
by Novel Kicks Fiction Friday: Space Race
Fiction Friday is our weekly writing prompt. The aim is to write for a minimum of five minutes and then keep going for as long as you can. Once you’ve finished, don’t edit, just post in the comments box below.
Today’s prompt is about a space race.
In the eleventh hour before a big race across space, you are fired from the team. On the morning of the race, you’re hired by the rival team. Your presence does not go down well with your former teammates. The stakes are high and the prize is life changing. The race is about to begin. On your marks, get set….
What happens in this race? Does anything underhand happen?
by Author Interview: Guy Mankowski Talks About His New Novel, An Honest Deceit
Guy Mankowski wrote his first novel, The Intimates when he was 21. His other novels include the fantastic Letters From Yelena and How I Left The National Grid. His new novel, An Honest Deceit was released by Urbane Publications on 20th October.
When Ben and Juliette’s young daughter dies in a tragic accident on a school trip, they begin searching for answers. But will they ever know the truth? What was the role of the teacher on the trip – and are the rumours about his past true? As Ben and Juliette search for the truth and the pressure rises, their own secrets and motivations are revealed…. An Honest Deceit is an intelligent and gripping contemporary psychological thriller that questions not just the motives of others, but the real reasons for discovering the truth.
Hi Guy, welcome back to Novel Kicks. Can you tell me a bit about your new novel, An Honest Deceit? What inspired you to write it?
Hi Laura, thanks for having me. An Honest Deceit is inspired in the main by an anger at the way our institutions often treat individuals who ask them uncomfortable questions. There are hundreds of people in this country who are sitting pretty in extremely well-paid jobs that they’ve only kept hold of because they’ve used the power institutions offer them to manipulate the truth. They use this power to hurt others and look after themselves. This book looks at the impact of that through the plot of a man investigating how his daughter was killed on a school trip.
What’s your typical writing day like? How has your writing approach changed since writing your first novel?
For my first novel, The Intimates, I edited the manuscript about three times. For my second novel, about eight times. For my third about 35 times and I couldn’t begin to count how many times I edited An Honest Deceit. Every word has been changed at least once so is it even the same novel? If someone looked at a draft I had of a novel called ‘Marine’, in 2011, I think they would barely recognise that it would become ‘An Honest Deceit.’ So my typical writing day has changed in that it is much more about editing and rarely about just writing.
What are the challenges of writing a psychological thriller?
It’s hard to know how deep you should go into a characters psyche because you don’t want to lose the narrative too much. The way I ended up handling it was to go very deep into their darkest thoughts and feelings and then in later drafts ensure that there were questions the reader had at every point to keep them going. It is hard to resolving everything, within your made-up world, so it doesn’t all seem too pat.
by Novel Kicks Writing Room: Sitting and Listening
Tuesday 25th October 2016: Sitting and Listening.
For today’s prompt, it’s about getting out and about and listening.
When you have a few spare moments, go and take a bus journey or sit in a coffee shop. In fact, any busy area will do.
Try to make notes of what people are talking about. How are they speaking? How do they say things? Try to take as many notes of conversation snippets as you can (but not making obvious you are spying on people.)
Once you’ve done that, make up a story based around some of the dialogue you’ve picked up.
by Book Club
