#BlogTour| #BookReview | MARIA IN THE MOON by Louise Beech @LouiseWriter (August 15th 2017, Orenda Books @OrendaBooks)

Welcome to my stop on this Blog Tour for MARIA IN THE MOON – the lastest novel from the exceptional Louise Beech.

I would like to say that I am blown away to be invited onto this blog tour! Particular thanks to Anne Cater, Karen Sullivan at Orenda Books and of course the fantastic Louise Beech who gifted me an early copy of MARIA IN THE MOON. I am forever grateful and promise that the review below is 100% honest and of my own views.

To kick off, we have the “blurb” for the book;

Long ago my beloved Nanny Eve chose my name. Then one day she stopped calling me it. I try now to remember why, but I just can’t.’

Thirty-one-year-old Catherine Hope has a great memory. But she can’t remember everything. She can’t remember her ninth year. She can’t remember when her insomnia started. And she can’t remember why everyone stopped calling her Catherine-Maria. With a promiscuous past, and licking her wounds after a painful breakup, Catherine wonders why she resists anything approaching real love.

But when she loses her home to the deluge of 2007 and volunteers at Flood Crisis, a devastating memory emerges … and changes everything. Dark, poignant and deeply moving, Maria in the Moon is an examination of the nature of memory and truth, and the defences we build to protect ourselves, when we can no longer hide…

So, you want to know what I think?

Every now and then I like to break the cycle of reading nothing but crime fiction, which something different. A cleansing of the reading palette you may call it. MARIA IN THE MOON was exactly that book that I needed to read.

What I was not prepared for is how much this book was going to get me in a headlock, punch me in the stomach a few times, then leave me on the floor breathless and in a tears! My word! That bloody Louise….. damn! She knows how to write a book that gets you right in the feels!

I personally enjoyed the slower pace of this book, but having said that, the pace does not take away from the emotions throughout. Living through a traumatic experience and trying to “fix” yourself afterwards is something I have wrestled with myself for most of my life. It’s scary how much I relate to Catherine. She is able to project this quite tough exterior at times, but underneath all that, she is damaged and trying to muddle through.

At times I felt like I was reading a true account of someone who was affected the floods that devestated Hull in 2007. The blurb really does capture the essence of this book when it’s describes as “dark, poignant and deeply moving…”

If you don’t mind balling your eyes in out public, then I would recommend you read this book right now!

About Louise Beech;

Louise Beech has always been haunted by the sea. She regularly writes travel pieces for the Hull Daily Mail, where she was a columnist for ten years. Her short fiction has won the Glass Woman Prize, the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose, and the Aesthetica Creative Works competition, as well as shortlisting for the Bridport Prize twice and being published in a variety of UK magazines.

Louise lives with her husband and children on the outskirts of Hull – the UK’s 2017 City of Culture – and loves her job as a Front of House Usher at Hull Truck Theatre, where her first play was performed in 2012. She was also part of the Mums’ Army on Lizzie and Carl’s BBC Radio Humberside Breakfast Show for three years.

You can buy MARIA IN THE MOON from the following booksellers;

Amazon (UK) | Amazon | Book Depository | Waterstones

-S.

Be sure to check out the other blogs participating in this Blog Tour. See below for further details and be sure to follow all of the action across Twitter!