Today it is my stop on the blog tour for Broken by Betsy Reavley. I’ve read a few of Betsy’s books and I was very excited to read another!
My Review:
It isn’t often that a book comes with warnings as strong as the ones that accompany this book. I’m not one to shy away from violence and so I wasn’t bothered by the warning, more intrigued. I do have my limits though and I did check that this book did not involve the abuse of children, which it does not.
I’ve read a few of Betsy Reavley’s books and I have to say that none of them is fluffy reading and all are pretty gruesome, yet none of them came with a warning so just how bad was this going to be?? The publisher, Bloodhound Books, also published The Watcher by Netta Newbound which I think is one of the most gruesome books that I have read, yet that also didn’t come with a warning.
So I went into this book expecting it to be full of gore from start to finish, so I was surprised to find myself reading a totally different book from the one that I had expected.
Annabel is trying to put her life back together, mental health problems have plagued Anna and she desperately wants to move on. Living back home with her mother and brother Annabel feels smothered by her mother who is understandably worried that Annabel will relapse and get unwell again.
She decides to take a trip to the seaside, she lies to her mother and sets off for a weekend away. She hadn’t realised that the small town that she was heading to was not the safe place that she thought that it would be because a serial killer is lurking.
This is where the book takes a strange turn, Annabel meets Jude who lives in a commune that Anna finds herself drawn into and life gets better and better for Anna. Or does it?
Just when the reader has dropped their guard the book suddenly plunges the reader into what can only be described as hell and we discover just how sick the author’s mind is!
I don’t actually think that the book is that bad to warrant all the warnings and I have definitely read worse. But Betsy Reavley does have a way with words and I have no doubt that some people will struggle with it.
But I enjoyed the book, the author does have a unique writing style but I quickly got used to that and found myself absorbed into the story and trying to work out what was going to happen.
I don’t want to give any more away to the reader, but this book has stayed with me after I finished it. Even now writing this review I am finding myself thinking about Annabel and her story which is definitely the sign of a good book.
Thank you to Bloodhound Books for a copy of Broken by Betsy Reavley. I was under no obligation to review the book and all thoughts are my own.
Blurb:
Annabel, a troubled young woman trying to put her life back together, decides to take a trip to the Suffolk coast to clear her head and get away from her mother. But when she arrives in the little seaside town, she discovers a series of grisly murders have taken place and police are searching for a twisted killer.
After a fateful meeting with a mysterious stranger, Jude, the course of her life changes and soon she finds peace in a world away from the misery she has known.
But when Jude comes under suspicion from the police, and her idyllic world is threatened, Annabel’s happy existence starts to become a nightmare.
Can Annabel escape her painful past or is her fate sealed? And why is she haunted by horrific visions when she seems on the verge of finding happiness?
This astonishing novel will take you on a shattering journey through Annabel’s fight for survival and will ask if the greatest threat we pose is to ourselves.
Suitable for over 18’s only. It contains graphic scenes some readers may find disturbing.
(previously published under the title Beneath the Watery Moon)
About The Author:
Author of The Quiet Ones, The Optician’s Wife, Murder at the Book Club, Murder in the Dark, Frailty, Carrion, Broken and the poetry collection The Worm in the Bottle. Betsy was born in Hammersmith, London.
As a child she moved around frequently with her family, spending time in London, Provence, Tuscany, Gloucestershire and Cambridgeshire.
She showed a flair for literature and writing from a young age and had a particular interest in poetry, of which she was a prolific consumer and producer.
In her early twenties she moved to Oxford where she would eventually meet her husband. During her time in Oxford her interests turned from poetry to novels and she began to develop her own unique style of psychological thriller.
Betsy says “I believe people are at their most fascinating when they are faced by the dark side of life. This is what I like to write about.”
Betsy Reavley currently lives in Cambridge with her husband, 2 children, dog and quail.
House of Spines by Michael J Malone sucked me right in from the very beginning. Who hasn’t daydreamed that one day they found out that they had an inheritance from some very rich relative that they had never known about?? So when Ran, who was down on his luck and trying to make a living as an author was told that he now owned a very large home in the posh part of town, complete with swimming pool, housekeeper and a very large library, I couldn’t help but be drawn into the story.
Ran was very isolated before his inheritance, his wife left him after he suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar, with both parents dead the only people that he had regular contact with were his agent and his neighbour. So a move was something that Ran was happy and able to do and short notice, so short that he didn’t take his medication with him. So when he started to see strange things in his new home and becomes convinced that there is a woman who lives in the lift of his new home we are never quite sure whether the woman is real or whether Ran is suffering another bipolar relapse after stopping his meds.
Malone writes Ran’s descent into madness very well, and it was hard not to get caught up in it at times. Suspicion and paranoia cause Ran to isolate himself further and soon isn’t sure who he can trust. When his cousins attempt to manipulate Ran into agreeing to sell the mansion that has become his home will Ran have the strength to stand up to them?
I really enjoyed reading House of Spines, it’s a cleverly written book that I’m still trying to work out!
Blurb:
Ran McGhie’s world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely and frustrated writer, and suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow’s oldest merchant families. Not only that, but Ran has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle, who appears to have been watching from afar as his estranged great-nephew has grown up. Entering his new-found home, he finds that Great-Uncle Fitzpatrick has turned it into a temple to the written word – the perfect place for poet Ran. But everything is not as it seems. As he explores the Hall’s endless corridors, Ran’s grasp on reality appears to be loosening. And then he comes across an ancient lift; and in that lift a mirror. And in the mirror … the reflection of a woman … A terrifying psychological thriller with more than a hint of the Gothic, House of Spines is a love letter to the power of books, and an exploration of how lust and betrayal can be deadly…
About The Author:
Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country, just a stone’s throw from the great man’s cottage in Ayr. Well, a stone thrown by a catapult. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings. His career as a poet has also included a (very) brief stint as the Poet-In- Residence for an adult gift shop. Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize (judge: Alex Gray) from the Scottish Association of Writers. Other published work includes: Carnegie’s Call (a non-fiction work about successful modern-day Scots); A Taste for Malice; The Guillotine Choice; Beyond the Rage and The Bad Samaritan. His psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number one bestseller. Michael is a regular reviewer for the hugely popular crime fiction website http://www.crimesquad.com. A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber & Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller.
House Of Spines By Michael J Malone is out now and available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
I’m fairly sure that this is the longest book review that I have written, I have tried to cut it down but can’t, it seems that I have a lot to say about A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold and feel the need to say it! It is also the first review that I have done that could be classed as giving away spoilers, although being a non-fiction book that doesn’t tell the reader anything that isn’t already ‘out there’ I’m not sure whether you can really class them as spoilers.
My 3* review:
I have to admit that while reading this book I did ask myself why I had wanted to read it. As a big crime fiction fan, I do find myself interested in real crime, especially the more unusual cases. I remember the shooting at Columbine high school in America, I remember being horrified that something like that could happen in a school and trying to comprehend why two teenage boys would decide to go on a rampage in their own school.
I am thankful that gun laws in the UK prevent this sort of thing from happening, and I’ve always been horrified at the subsequent school shootings that have happened since Columbine. I have to admit that part of me is fascinated about what would make someone shoot children in a school, and what type of upbringing might cause someone to do that.
So when I came across A Mother’s Reckoning I wanted to read it, I wanted to understand what had happened at Columbine and how Dylan’s parents coped with the aftermath. I wanted to know whether the author would try to minimise her son’s involvement or paint herself as a wonderful mother who did nothing wrong? I had many questions.
The first half of this book is incredibly depressing to read. It is clear that Sue Klebold descended into a very dark place after the shooting and she uses the pages to vomit those feelings out onto the reader. I got to 50% through and had to take a break, I could feel my own thoughts becoming darker and knew that I had to step away from the book. I read two fiction books before returning, bracing myself for more.
Perhaps because I was prepared for it the second half was not as deeply depressing as the first. In fact, the second half actually said very little that wasn’t in the first half, this book is very repetitive. We hear, again and again, and again, how Sue and her now ex-husband had not noticed anything with Dylan that they hadn’t put down to normal teenage angst and how if she had suspected anything then she would have forced Dylan to get help and that then Dylan wouldn’t have felt so desperate and wouldn’t have killed so many people. I’m simplifying it, but basically, Sue Klebold obviously thinks that she could have saved the day if only she’d noticed.
Another thing that Klebold focuses on is what she calls ‘brain illness’. She does eventually give a brief explanation of why she says brain illness rather than mental health but if I’m honest, by then I was past caring about the why as it had become so annoying that I just wanted her to stop it and call it what it is. Brain illness makes no sense to me, sure, I understand that when you have mental health problems that your brain doesn’t work as it should, but does it have an illness? If my kidney’s stop working properly I don’t say that I have kidney illness, or a leg illness when I’ve broken my bone. You get the point, but it’s annoying and unnecessary. And yes, I do have mental health problems so feel that I am able to say that I hate ‘brain illness’.
It was interesting to read about Klebold’s denial around what her son did and how that denial was smashed when the police sat her down and told her step by step, what had happened during the rampage that Dylan and his friend Eric went on, including who shot who. It is made clear to us that Dylan shot fewer people than Eric and that he had spared a few people, telling them to run instead of shooting them. While these may be true facts it did feel that Klebold had emphasised them to make sure that we know that her son was not the worst.
It is clear that Klebold sees Eric as the bad one and that without him in his life Dylan would never have done such terrible things. Klebold acknowledges that Dylan had mental health (sorry, brain illness) problems that were undiagnosed and tells us repeatedly that Dylan was suicidal yet unable to kill himself, but so desperate was he to die that he went along with Eric’s plan to kill others, something that both boys knew would end in their deaths too. Klebold does talk about the memorials for the victims, she tells us that originally two crosses had been put there for Dylan and Eric but they had been destroyed. I can’t help but feel that she thinks that Dylan deserves a cross, that he too was a victim in all of this.
Since finishing this book I have done some more research into Dylan especially, but also Eric and the shootings. It is clear that there were more signs that Dylan was in trouble, like clear anger management issues, that were not mentioned in the book. This is not a short book and as I said it is very repetitive so there was plenty of room for Klebold to tell us about this, but I guess that she didn’t want to. Which makes me question the rest of the book, and what else she decided not to tell us.
What Klebold had to go through must have been beyond horrific and I do feel compassion towards her. She has clearly gone on to do a lot of good, supporting others who have lost children to suicide and reaching out to other parents of school shooters. The fact that she managed to get through what happened and put it to something positive is commendable.
However, I’m not really sure what she wanted to achieve with this book. The focus of the book is, understandably, on Dylan and although she tells us many times that she is very sorry about the people that were hurt by her son the victims seem to be almost forgotten and, in many ways, irrelevant. The book is far longer than it needed to be, mainly because of the repetitiveness which is a shame, this book could be a very powerful tool, helping parents to look at their children and see signs that may suggest that their child needs help and support. Instead, Klebold comes across as quite preachy and arrogant, placing blame with many people and institutions, but not with Dylan and certainly not with herself.
I received a copy of A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold from the publishers via Netgalley, I was under no obligation to review the book and all thoughts are my own.
Blurb:
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.
For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?
These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.
Filled with hard-won wisdom and compassion, A Mother’s Reckoning is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. And with fresh wounds from the recent Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent.
All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.
A Mother’s Reckoning by Sue Klebold is out now and available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
So, today we have something a little bit different on If only I could read faster. It isn’t often that I review a non-fiction book, but I have always supported Sarah Rayner’s non-fiction books and so when she released a new one I wanted to help her let more people know about her books.
I sort of feel like this is a bit of a ‘coming out’ post for me, I am not someone who is open about their mental health struggles, I’ve always been a private person and I guess aware of the stigma around mental health. But I do think that that stigma is not the same as it used to be, I certainly hope not anyway, and I don’t think that keeping mental health struggles quiet is helpful to the person who has the struggles, or those that are close to them. So I have been thinking for a while that it would be good to be more open about my experiences, I was just unsure how to go about that.
So reviewing Making Friends with Depression and doing a Q&A with Sarah Rayner is my way of ‘coming out’ about my own mental health struggles. I have been a member of the Facebook group, Making Friends with Anxiety (now Making Friends with Anxiety and Depression), for a couple of years now, and although not a very active member the group has at times been very helpful, although for me anxiety is not my main struggle. My battle is with depression, severe and debilitating depression. It is something that I struggle with in some way or other pretty much every single day, although thankfully with the right support and treatment I am able to function in the sometimes scary world.
Making Friends with range by Sarah Rayner.
My 4* review:
Having read Sarah Rayner’s previous non-fiction books focusing on anxiety I was keen to read her latest book about depression. Rayner has a great way of talking to her audience, it really does feel like you are chatting with her in person when you read. Her style is light and certainly not preachy.
The book is broken down into chapters that spell the word Depression. So chapter one talks about diagnosis, where the book talks about what depression is and the various symptoms, two about expert support including guidance on talking to your doctor and medication and so on.
This means that reading the book is broken down into simple, easy to read topics. In this book Sarah is also joined by another author who has struggled with depression, helping to give different viewpoints and experiences, and by a GP who gives his professional experience too. Although Rayner is the main narrator the book does benefit from the other contributors.
Perhaps the most important contribution comes from people who struggle with depression. In researching this book Rayner carried out a number of online questionnaires in order to get as a wide an experience as possible as no one with depression has the same experience as another. There are regular quotes in the book from these responses (including one from me) and I found these to be helpful and I think would definitely help someone in the middle of a depressive episode to feel less alone.
One of the chapters does focus on crisis care, where they advise on what to do and where to get help in an emergency situation, but the rest of the book is aimed at people who are struggling with depression but not, in my experience, a severe episode.
I know from my own experience that if I was at a really low point then this book would be of very limited help to me, but if I was at the start of a depression and if you like, caught it early enough, then this book would be a great help and reminder of things that I can do to help get myself out of it before I go too far.
I think that this book would be particularly useful for someone who is new to depression, and perfect for someone who is just starting to accept that they have depression as this book will educate them in a non-judgemental, easy to follow way. It would also be very helpful for a friend or family member of someone with depression.
This is a light and easy to read book, and I’ve no doubt that many will gain a lot from reading it. I do feel that if someone is struggling with severe depression then this book would have limited use.
The final thing to note about this book are the many wonderful illustrations. Rayner, it turns out, is something of an artist and she has drawn lots of pictures for the book. Although in Kindle format these illustrations are often not fully legible, especially small writing, which is unfortunate, although I believe this is only the case with e-readers and not if you use a kindle app on tablet or phone. I think that this is one book that would be better to read in hard copy so that you can make notes, perhaps highlight parts, and enjoy the illustrations.
Sarah Rayner.
Q&A with Sarah Rayner:
You started off writing fiction. What made you change to writing non-fiction books?
I didn’t deliberately set out to change from one to the other – in fact I’ve always written non-fiction, just not in book form, as for twenty years my ‘day job’ was advertising copywriting. So you may have read my work in magazines or on the tube, but not been aware I was the author! Some people might say that advertising is a form of fiction, but I found that composing letters, brochures and advertorials good training when it came to writing my non-fiction titles, as I learned how to sift through information and pare it down so I could write about complex subjects in an accessible way.
Then, when I was launching my novel Another Night, Another Day, which focuses on three people who meet in a psychiatric clinic, I was invited to write a series of blogs for Moodscope, a website which allows you to track your moods on a daily basis. I decided to focus on panic and worry as I’d personal experience of anxiety, and each day for a week explored a different area related to subject, starting with ‘A’ for ‘Adrenaline’ and finishing with ‘Y’ for ‘You’, so that after seven days I’d spelt out the word ANXIETY. I researched each subject carefully – not least as I stood to benefit myself! – and had the content checked by a GP to make sure the advice I gave was responsible. The reaction to those blogs was so heartfelt – it seemed there were a lot of people out there who were as desperate as I had been – that it led me to believe there was an opportunity to offer anxiety sufferers something more permanent that they could turn to whenever the need arose. So I set my hand to penning Making Friends with Anxiety, a little self-help book where I drew upon my own experiences and learnings in order to help others help themselves. Because I’d experience of marketing, I decided to publish the book myself, curious to see what ‘independent publishing’ was really like, and discover I could make it work financially and aesthetically as well as reaching out to a new readership.
2. Have you always been open about your mental health struggles or did you make a conscious decision to tell people about it when you wrote Making Friends with Anxiety?
My father, Eric Rayner, was a psychoanalyst, so an interest in mental health is in my blood. He recently passed away but his intellectual influence on me was always strong, and I remember asking him to direct me to books on people with multiple personality disorder when I was 17 as there was a song by Siouxsie and the Banshees – remember them? – called Christine, which focused on a woman with the condition. However it took several decades before I was ready to write about mental illness myself – maybe because he was so erudite! So whilst I touched on it in my other novels, it wasn’t until my fifth book, Another Night, Another Day, that I made it the focus of the story. When launching Another Night, Another Day it seemed relevant – and important in terms of overcoming stigma – to speak of my own experiences – and since then I’ve been much more open. I would encourage others to talk if they feel up to it, too, as whilst I still have dark days, I believe bottling up emotions or trying to cope on our own often makes us feel much worse.
3. You began with Making Friends with Anxiety, followed by colouring and craft books, and a book on the menopause. Why did you decide to focus on anxiety and the menopause before writing your latest book on depression?
Depression is arguably the obvious successor to a book on anxiety as both are frequently diagnosed together, but my anxiety had escalated enormously in the run up to the menopause, and I became interested in the link between hormonal changes and panic so for me the subject of menopause was the natural follow-up. I was also wary about dealing with the sensitive subject of depression on my own; using my experiences as the sole basis for extrapolating advice aimed at a wide audience, many of whom would be in a highly distressed state, seemed unwise and potentially dangerous. But when my fellow author Kate Harrison and doctor friend Patrick Fitzgerald expressed an interest in collaborating, I became inspired by the prospect of what we might do together. And when the team of wonderful volunteers who help run the ‘Making Friends with Anxiety’ group on Facebook offered to expand the group to include sufferers of depression too, I finally felt we had a ‘net’ so to speak, capable of supporting people in a way that I could never offer alone. Once I had sorted those elements, I felt able to embark on the project and I’m thrilled with how the book has turned out.
4. You asked people to fill in online questionnaires when you were researching Making Friends with Depression, did you learn anything surprising from doing that?
The survey was Kate’s suggestion: she uses a similar technique to help research her 5:2 diet books. I was astonished by the huge number of responses we got, and the honesty of the replies. I think perhaps because they could remain anonymous, people felt more able to express themselves. We asked all sorts of questions (readers can see the survey here, and it helped us understand not only how differently individuals experience depression, but also the commonalities. I was interested to learn how many people had had some form of therapy through the NHS – that’s a big and positive change and one that has happened in the last five years. What is less good is that a great number of respondents felt the therapy had stopped too soon. It’s my hope that our book will enable those who feel bereft of support either begin or continue to help themselves – because recovery is possible.
5. Why did you decide to start the Making Friends with Anxiety Facebook page?
One important distinction is that it’s a group not a page, which means that members have to ask to join. This means they can discuss their issues with others in confidence, and I know from my own experience of being in groups that talking to others with similar experiences can go a long way towards helping us feel more connected to others and confident. To explain the benefits more fully, I asked the members. Here are a few responses:
“Making Friends with Anxiety means I’m not alone anymore, like-minded people are always available on my mobile. People that I now consider friends.”
“🙂It’s somewhere I can be myself, where I’m understood, nobody will judge me or call me a nutter or tell me I’m being stupid. People are so warm and caring – it’s like a big fluffy comfort blanket!”
“This group makes me feel not so insular. Never have I spoken completely honestly about my anxiety or what it has caused me to do or feel. I have a voice, I am not alone and everyone on this site is so supportive and kind which is exactly what you need when you feel low. It is like a little supportive family when you don’t have your own to turn to.”
6. You have drawn a lot of drawings for Making Friends with Depression, and you’ve released two books on creativity and mental illness. How do you think that being creative helps your mental health?
I’ve noticed that when my brain is tired of writing that I still have energy to draw; this may be because they involve different neural pathways. In any case, I feel we can often say a lot more with a drawing than with words, and illustrations were a way of ‘lightening up’ the book without being flip. I found myself smiling as I drew, feeling empathy for the characters I was creating. So there are two examples of how being creative helps lift my spirits, and others who suffer with anxiety or depression have said similar. Kate writes about cooking in the book for instance, and how it enables her to combine self-care and creativity. Patrick is a musician as well as a GP – my guess is that it helps him unwind from listening to patients’ problems to thrash about on a guitar!
7. You’ve become a champion with all the work that you do around mental health; writing books, an active role on the Facebook page and your regular feature in Psychology Today.
8. Was this something that you wanted to do when you set out to write Making Friends with Anxiety?
When my father was a young man, he was a naval officer and he visited Japan in the aftermath of Hiroshima. He was horrified by what he saw there, and it was this experience that led him to work in mental health – he wanted to understand why people could be so destructive, when he believed that basically humans are social and good. He spent over 50 years campaigning for better mental healthcare. My motivations are not the same, but I do appreciate where he was coming from in trying to build bridges between people. I don’t believe there is a one-size-fits-all ‘cure’ for depression or anxiety or grief, but I do I believe understanding ourselves can give us greater freedom from mental illness, and the support of others can help us through dark times.
9. Do you have plans to write more books on mental health or will you return to fiction?
Hopefully both! I’ve just relaunched my first novel, The Other Half, as an ebook with illustrations – it’s probably the furthest from Making Friends with Depression that it’s possible to be. This link should allow you to look inside, and you’ll see what I mean!
It tells the story of an affair from the alternating perspectives of the wife and the mistress and is half price to download between Friday 16 and Sunday 18 December as a present to all my readers – and yours – so they can treat themselves to an illicit affair via my novel over Christmas should they fancy it.
Thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog, Becca. It’s been really interesting to get this chance to talk about all my books, and keep up the great work!
Sarah Rayner’s fiction books.
Thank you so much for answering all the questions Sarah, and for the half price download of The Other Half! It has been great to have you on If only I could read faster and I wish you lots of luck with future books.
All of Sarah Rayner’s books can be found on Amazon UK and Amazon US. I particularly recommend One Moment One Morning.
If only I could read faster 