Book Review: The Home by Sarah Stovell

January 17, 2020

I received this book for free from Anne @ Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This book may be unsuitable for people under 17 years of age due to its use of sexual content, drug and alcohol use, and/or violence.

The Home by Sarah Stovell
Published by Orenda Books on 22 January 2020
ISBN: 9781912374731
Genres: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Domestic
Pages: 278
Format: ARC, eBook
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

A gritty, dark and devastating psychological thriller centring around three troubled girls in a children's home, by the bestselling author of Exquisite
'I was immediately ensnared into the devastating and dark world of The Home and devoured it in one day ... A triumph' Holly Seddon
'Gripping, sinister and utterly heartbreaking ... I absolutely loved it' Lisa Hall
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One more little secret ... one more little lie...
When the body of a pregnant fifteen-year-old is discovered in a churchyard on Christmas morning, the community is shocked, but unsurprised. For Hope lived in The Home, the residence of three young girls, whose violent and disturbing pasts have seen them cloistered away...
As a police investigation gets underway, the lives of Hope, Lara and Annie are examined, and the staff who work at the home are interviewed, leading to shocking and distressing revelations ... and clear evidence that someone is seeking revenge.
A gritty, dark and devastating psychological thriller, The Home is also an emotive drama and a piercing look at the underbelly of society, where children learn what they live ... if they are allowed to live at all.
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'So beautiful and haunting and ghostly and addictive and intense and sad and shocking. Just wow' Louise Beech
'A vividly disturbing, eloquent and enthralling tale ... striking, thought-provoking, compulsive storytelling' LoveReading

A poignant and a slash to the chest kind of read. In order to love a book, you need to find something that speaks to you. It needs to draw out connections. It simply knows how you tick. The Home had this in spades. The talent coming to life in these pages are like liquid gold – valuable and rare. It has the addictive pull that ties you down and stops you doing your chores. The only thing The Home does is take you hostage and holds you to ransom until you have read the final word of the final page.

This book has everything you need to hold your attention in a futile struggle. The stable Children’s Home. A forbidden love. Terrible parenting. Terrible decisions. Toxic relationships. A death. The death of a potential future. Layered betrayals. Deceit. And all the heartbreak you can take.

Sarah Stovell is an author that obviously lives and breathes her writing. The book has taken on an entity all its own. It’s like she has the secret formula that can break a heart. Mine blew straight out of my chest. Her narrative then leaves you searching for the missing pieces for the entirety of the novel. The tears pricked my eyes, my heart physically hurt but left me with an overwhelmingly urge to hug my babies tightly. I needed to show them the love I felt.

This definitely a hard book to read. The content is overwhelming. It’s a story that is meant to unseat you and make you uncomfortable. It’s hard and harrowing and makes you take a long hard look at your comfy existence. You might have experienced hard ship yourself but just how bad have you had it? It pulls and extracts such an intense level of empathy from your body…I had an all-encompassing feeling of just wanting to mother these girls. If I had the space, I would have taken them in in an instant.

This is the first book I have read by Sarah Stovell but by all means and purposes she is hitting legendary status. I will rectify that as soon as I possibly can. The characters she creates are broken, with a story to tell, dark and deep histories, but they have such a capacity for love. It’s amazing that after everything they have been through they can show love towards one another. Hope and Annie have such dogged determination. Neither of them want to be in this situation. It was never a conscious choice. They were dealt the worst betrayal from parents that should have given their lives for their kids.

The Home is a children’s Home that is a safe Haven to Hope (15) and Annie (15) and Lara (12). There have the good fortune of being surrounded by the Lake District. Despite the circumstances it could, indeed, be a lot worse. The setting, the opening chapter, the creeping shadow of desolation and despair had me hook, line and sinker. I was done for – I ended up racing to the finish.

Why you ask?

Well, Sarah Stovell has created a perfect cadence of a highly addictive plot that seeps in its intensity but try as you might to slow the reading, to savour each delicious page…it is impossible. The characters, although they have been broken down by life, they display the most amazing strength and dare I even say it a hunger to still continue living. Hope toys with the idea of ending it all but I genuinely put that down to not having any direction. These girls are the epitome of the word survival.

The story kicks off on Christmas day. Two girls are missing – Hope and Annie and Lara is in The Home, silent and unyielding. Choices come full circle and that message is being shouted loud and clear. It’s audible, deafening and terrifyingly deep. A girl is found beside the water, dead and the other is hysterical with her grief. It is bone deep. After the story starts to unfold you wonder just how much one person can take?

Annie’s metamorphosis from victim to survivor is poignantly beautiful – she’s scarred and with flaws, but she stands tall. The author has wrote about a superhero in my eyes and her characterisation spoke to me so clearly. It was impossible not to love her.

The Home is a chillingly, deeply disturbing take on the unreliable narrator. It unseats you. The narrative is razor sharp and unlike anything you have ever read before.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE HOME

Sarah Stovell, author of The Home published by Orenda Books.

Sarah Stovell was born in 1977 and spent most of her life in the Home Counties before a season working in a remote North Yorkshire youth hostel made her realise she was a northerner at heart. She now lives in Northumberland with her partner and two children and is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lincoln University. Her debut psychological thriller, Exquisite, was called ‘the book of the summer’ by Sunday Times.

Sarah Stovell

Review: The Haunting of Strawberry Water by Tara Gould

January 8, 2020

I received this book for free from Anne @ Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review: The Haunting of Strawberry Water by Tara Gould

The Haunting of Strawberry Water by Tara Gould
Published by Myriad Editions on January 29th 2020
Genres: Fiction, Short Stories (single author), Suspense, Thrillers, Women
Pages: 64
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

‘This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.’ —Kerry Hudson
A gripping tale of post-natal depression, this short story reads like a modern retelling of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and has much in common with Sarah Water' The Little Stranger in its realisation of psychological distress as a supernatural phenomenon.A new mother, traumatised by an arduous labour, tries to come to terms with being abandoned as a baby by Olivia, the mother she never knew. Set in the eponymous ‘Strawberry Water’, a mysterious 1920s country bungalow which overlooks a fast-flowing river, the story begins with a faded photograph of the woman our narrator assumes to be her mother.
Spotlight Books is a collaboration between Creative Future, New Writing South and Myriad Editions to discover, guide and support writers who are under-represented due to mental or physical health issues, disability, race, class, gender identity or social circumstance.

The Haunting of Strawberry Water catapults you into an ethereal memory of an important figure. A Mother. An extension of yourself, connected by genes and love. Someone that will stand by you until their last breath. They can protect you or they can destroy that link forever. Tara Gould depicts an elegant but deeply heart-breaking tome that displays the links between motherhood and mental health. It’s disturbing but so very perfect. Gould is an artist of trauma, she knows exactly how to inject a longing and flaw to her character. Is our outcome in life more of an inevitability due to our childhoods or can it be altered?

An extremely toxic relationship between a girl and her forgotten mother. It’s the kind of novel that will capture your attention and have you examining your own relationship with your mother. It’s deeply claustrophobic. The regimes that the abandoned daughter goes through to keep that one link to the forgotten one. The narrative voice is strong, with a sense of melancholy that seems to escalate as the character ages. It was interesting to see a child grow right before our eyes. Her mannerisms, her growth, her constant longing for answers to a broken link in a chain. Her own change into a mother herself.

It really is a story of growth and change. A coming of age story. However, I felt the story was directed more towards Olivia, the mother. Why she left, who she was, where did she go? She was the ever-present ghost in the life of a girl that shaped how she lived her own life. Becoming a mother is a massive event, it changes you in ways you never knew were even possible. You suddenly have this little bundle that you are completely responsible for and it can weigh heavily on you. Your previous life is never going to be the same again. You must change and adapt. It was a highly emotional study of relationships and hardship. Regret and longing.

The Haunting of Strawberry Water is a totally original, emotionally charged short story of incredible loss of potential. The potential of love. It’s dark and layered.

Tara Gould, the author of short story, The Haunting of Strawberry Water

Tara Gould studied visual arts at Brighton University and an MA at Sussex University. Her short stories have been published in anthologies including the Asham Anthology for Women Writers, and her plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In 2016 she was Writer in Residence at Creative Futures. She lives in East Sussex.

https://twitter.com/taragouldy?lang=en

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone

January 7, 2020

I received this book for free from Anne @ Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A Dark Matter by Doug Johnstone
Published by Orenda Books Limited on November 23 2019
ISBN: 9781912374991
Genres: Fiction, City Life, Mystery & Detective, Private Investigators, Cozy, General, Noir, Women Sleuths, Romance, LGBT, Lesbian, Psychological, Thrillers, Crime, Domestic, Women, Urban, Humorous, Black Humor, Family Life, Literary, Amateur Sleuth, Suspense
Pages: 300
Format: eBook
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral home and PI businesses in the first book of a taut, page-turning and darkly funny new series.
‘I was addicted from the first page; gripping, gritty and darkly funny as hell’ Erin Kelly
‘A Dark Matter showcases a writer at the peak of his powers, except that with every book, Doug Johnstone just gets better’ Val McDermid
'Emotionally complex, richly layered and darkly funny. An addictive blend of Case Histories and Six Feet Under’ Chris Brookmyre
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Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators...
When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events.
Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.
As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything...
A compelling, tense and shocking thriller and a darkly funny and warm portrait of a family in turmoil, A Dark Matter introduces a cast of unforgettable characters, marking the start of an addictive new series.
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‘A fiendish mystery that is also deeply moving and laced with suitably dark humour ... set to be one of the books of the year’ Mark Billingham
‘This dark but touching thriller makes for a thoroughly enjoyable slice of Edinburgh noir’ Mary Paulson-Ellis
‘A tense ride ... strong, believable characters’ Kerry Hudson, Big Issue
‘Dark, engrossing, impossible to put down. By turns a crime thriller, a family saga, and a page-turner, this book has everything!’ Luca Veste
'That rare book with heart and smarts to lift it above your average crime novel’ Stuart Neville
‘I can never get enough of Doug Johnstone’s thoughtful, observant, soul-lifting writing’ Louise Beech
‘Piercing, wonderfully real and so very readable ... a breath of fresh air’ LoveReading
‘This is confident, assured characterisation that carries the story brilliantly well and keeps the reader utterly immersed in the interwoven story strands’ Live & Deadly
‘A Dark Matter is further proof that Doug Johnstone is as versatile a writer as they come ... there’s rhythm and music in his words’ From Belgium with Booklove
‘A thriller that begs to be read in one sitting. Highly recommend’ The Book Review Café
‘Deliciously chilling, with a wry humour running throughout ... toxic, unsettling and just perfect’ Random Things through My Letterbox

The dark sense of Scottish humour has never been utilised to its full potential. Until now. A Dark Matter is a multi-layered double entendre that is pushing itself to the surface. It capitulates the dreich weather, the wounds that get hidden by alcohol but it’s all held up by the innate will of three immensely strong female characters. They are determined. They are strong and above all…no-one should try to fuck them over! Orenda Books is my go-to publisher for crime fiction and when you find an author that drips in his skill for getting the average scots character down, you know you’re onto a winner.

We have a trio of incredibly strong women. At the top of the matriarchy is, Dorothy. A spunky 70-year-old Californian. She should be commended on her ease for settling in Scotland so well. It really can’t be easy coming from those sun kissed beaches and being faced with dreich and dour weather. She married the love of her life and they were there for each right until the end. Dorothy is a widower, a mother, a grandmother and nothing stands in her way. She put everything into her life with Jim. Their funeral director business, their marriage but did Jim feel the same way? What changed?

Jenny, Dorothy and Jim’s daughter. I loved her. She’s fallen on hard times. She’s been made redundant, she is struggling with the payments on her flat, she seems to have lost her direction in life. Her daughter is grown up, flourishing at university but Jenny seems to be going from situation to situation. Craig her ex treated her appallingly, cheated on her and left her to pick up the pieces. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly but her moral compass is still intact, despite the circumstances. She is now living back with her mum after her father’s passing and is aiding in the funeral directors and the private investigation business. Can she finally find what’s missing and move forward?

Hannah, Jenny’s daughter can be a wee bit obsessive. She focusses on the end goal and never loses sight of it. She is one smart cookie. She is neutralised and held up by her partner, Indy. What a team they make. They are each the others Ying and Yang. Hannah is rocked by the disappearance of her flatmate, Mel. She knows something isn’t right, and my Jove, she’ll get to the bottom of it.

Never doubt how strong a woman a can be, nor how dangerous. Hand this book to those who doubt and wait for their reactions – there are three Skelf women in this story and they are definitely a force to reckoned with. Each one is struggling with their grief. Dorothy finds out her husband has been making strange payments from their business account to an unknown woman. Jenny needs to navigate her new life and her case involving a cheating man. Hannah needs to focus on finding her friend otherwise where will her thoughts take her?

Events lead to a crescendo of shocks and emotion. Will the Skelf women be swallowed up cold hard facts? Are they dabbling in things that they have no right dabbling in? It’s all very bleak – love and death are two sides of the same coin.

I’m very pleased this is going to be a series, I can’t wait to see what the author has the Skelf women getting up to next. The author hasn’t only created a bubble of death and mystery but real deep-thinking points also. He has addressed the #metoo issue and carved away the fog that often surrounds it. Women are so often brought up around by everyday misogyny that sometimes it can be difficult to picture it a different way. Would it be viewed differently if women were treating men in the same way. Even when they do, it seems to be more of a non-issue. The metoo movement needs to be tackled from both angles and Doug Johnstone does that eloquently.

Dark Matter was like quicksand. When you opened the books pages it sucked you in, further and further, until you were all in…nothing was going to pull you out. Doug steers you in each direction, a myriad of compulsive, addictive stories. He’s the crazy driver but you got in his car willingly. You’re in for the long haul, there is no getting out. It really is a book of self-discovery of three immovable women. They discover a lot about themselves. The backdrop was spot on, a true portrayal of Edinburgh. From the weather to the culture, each woman sees their city differently. Their experiences aren’t the same. It really breathes a dark and foreboding element into its pages…fear lurking within.

A Dark Matter is hypnotically readable. It was intense and surreal with a sense of creeping dread pouring from its spines. Doug Johnstone is a master craftsman that will continue to get better and better. This book had me gasping for breath at its sheer brilliance.

Doug Johnstone, author of dark new thriller, A Dark Matter.

Doug Johnstone is the author of ten novels, most recently Breakers (2018), which has been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Several of his books have been bestsellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions – including a funeral home – and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also player- manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

https://dougjohnstone.com/

Book Review: The Good Mother by Cathryn Grant

January 5, 2020

I received this book for free from Anne @ Random Things Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Book Review: The Good Mother by Cathryn Grant

The Good Mother Published by Inkubator Books on January 8th 2020
ISBN: 4470993568303
Genres: Domestic Thriller
Pages: 333
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

Amy’s life is picture perfect. Mess with that picture – you’re going to pay.

Amy’s life is close to perfect – two lovely daughters, a wonderful husband and she’s queen bee in her circle of soccer moms. She feels content, like she’s finally put some distance between herself and the terrible events of long ago.

The only fly in the ointment is Charlotte, a recent arrival to this affluent suburban community. The shameless way she dresses, the way the men look at her… it’s not right, she’s just not the kind of person they want around here.

Amy spearheads a drive to exclude Charlotte, to make it clear to her that she’s not welcome here. Infuriatingly, Charlotte doesn’t seem to care… And when her daughter joins the soccer team there’s just no getting away from her.

But Amy knows from bitter experience the kind of trouble a woman like Charlotte can bring. And there is no way on earth that her girls are ever going to be exposed to anything like that. The solution is clear - Charlotte has to go. No matter what it takes.

The gripping domestic thriller for fans of Liane Moriarty, T. M. Logan, and Sally Hepworth.

Welcome to the blog and I have a real treat for you – It’s my blog tour spot and I’m happy to be bringing my book review of this brilliant domestic thriller, The Good Mother.

The Good Mother is a stark warning that we can all become products of our past. The past can haunt us, and it can keep tiptoeing back into our lives. Is it ever possible to bury the past? This premise is one that sends chills down my spine. Can darkness seep its way into Pleasantville? The characters seem to have the perfect life, the perfect husbands and children but what darkness threatens to tip the scales…is the catalyst a new neighbour? This sets the tone for the entire story. Violence has the capability of ruining the victim, fracturing communities and creating a lifetime of suffering for witnesses- especially child. Mental illness can become an inevitable conclusion.

The opening chapter is a hellish nightmare. No-one wants to live through that experience, especially a child in their informative years…the long-standing effects are cataclysmic. This event was earth-shattering, therefore, this chapter really sets you up for the pace and the concerning tone of the novel.

Fast forward in time. A different location. Worlds away from the past. Amy has forged a completely new existence from the one she had experienced as a child. Therefore, she is determined nothing will be the same. She has the perfect husband, beautiful twin daughters, an immaculate home, affluent neighbourhood and friends that care deeply about her. She has fought from the bottom up, tooth and nail, to create this worlds away from her childhood, life. She has been born again from the ashes. Nothing will stand in her way. Nothing.

Life is sweet, she has absolutely nothing to worry about, that is, until Charlotte moves into her neighbourhood. She somehow transports Amy back to her past…back to darker times. A place that she never wanted to revisit again, as a result the author has captured expertly the fear and the paranoia of past events coming back to haunt her. She begins to feel that scar re-emerge, torn open. It has never fully disappeared. Moving hasn’t altered it, she is living with her very own Pandora’s box.

I don’t particularly think that any of the characters were that likeable. However, Just like in a town you get different spectrums of personalities; this book also examines that. Amy and her friends have moments of kindness, cruelty and deviousness. The author used this to her strength – she developed depth and clarity to the characterisation. Each character pulls a reaction from you, for whatever the situation is. All the topics was handled with respect but brought to life with realism. This was the perfect foundation for this taut domestic thriller.

The Good Mother is smart and ridiculously suspenseful. A story of family, broken pasts with a meticulously laced plot. The perfect thriller. The perfect start to a new year.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cathryn Grant - Book Review: The Good Mother by Cathryn Grant

About Cathryn Grant:

Cathryn is the author of the Alexandra Mallory Psychological Suspense series, Psychological Thrillers, Suburban Noir novels, The Haunted Ship Trilogy, and the Madison Keith Ghost Story series. THE GOOD MOTHER will be her second novel published with Inkubator Books.

Cathryn’s fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines, The Shroud Quarterly Journal, and The Best of Every Day Fiction. When she’s not writing, Cathryn reads fiction, eavesdrops, and tries to play golf without hitting her ball into the sand or the water. She lives on the Central California coast with her husband and two cats.

Social Media:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CathrynGrant

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CathrynGrant.Writer/

Website: https://www.cathryngrant.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathryngrant_fiction/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cathryn-Grant/e/B004G1I484?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1566901527&sr=8-3

Book Review: Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton.

January 3, 2020

Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton
on 9th January 2020
ISBN: 9780241374504
Genres: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 320
Format: ARC, Paperback
Source: Publisher
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads

In a rural English village in the middle of a snowstorm, the unthinkable happens- the school is under siege.
From the wounded headmaster barricaded in the library, to teenage Hannah in love for the first time, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the terrified 8-year-old Syrian refugee, to the kids sheltering in the school theatre still rehearsing Macbeth, all must find the courage to stand up to evil and try to save the people they love . . .

Thanks to the publisher for my ARC copy of Three Hours. This book review is completely unbiased.

This is genuinely one of the hardest reviews I have ever had to pen…not because it’s bad, but because this book was all kinds of awesome. but also shocking. Awesomely heart-breaking, awesomely nerve-shattering and awesomely guts tearing out. This is a story of the present being forged by the past. Are we all a product of our upbringing? Just what parts of our past deems what we will become in the future? How much to we cling onto the past? Is it subjective? Is it a case of mere psychology or individual personalities? I’d like to hope that no matter what our childhoods threw at us, we would know what was right and wrong. I would hope that our mere humanity would bring us out on the right side.

This book is not for the light- hearted. Three Hours is a book that is heavy in its content. Its heavy in the emotional stakes and if you are anything like me – it will break you down, rip you open and leaving you with one tiny needle to try and stitch yourself back up with. It is the kind of book that will inject cold hard fear into your spine.

I don’t live too far away from the Dunblane school that was the victim of the UK’s only shooting massacre, and I can remember vividly how much devastation that caused to the families and the community as a whole. It makes you question everything – your friends, your family, the thin line between reality and fantasy. There won’t be a dry eye in the house – I completely soaked my ARC copy. The author has an amazing talent for completely ruining her reader.

“Love is the most powerful thing there is.”

The headmaster in this tale is heroic. He puts himself in the direct firing line, having no regard for his own life, therefore, he treats his students like his extended family, he allows them to just be themselves. No uniform, no head boy/girl, no prefects and most importantly no religion. That being said, this shouldn’t be a school that is targeted in such a violent attack, right? He is the gentlest teacher I have come across. This isn’t the first time he has put his pupils needs first…He has a big heart and his predicament pulls at your heartstrings.

The pupils. The most important characters. The strength of them. The will of them. They have different personalities. They experience fear in different ways. And yet… and yet they are as one in a terrifying situation. They deserve the publicity; their names deserve to be said out loud over and over. The perpetrators deserve nothing. Some little details I didn’t see coming, some surprises. It was harrowing and breaking bit by little bit. I don’t want to give it away so just read the book.

Leave your assumptions at the door. They really don’t belong here. This author…just wow. The narrative blew me away. This is the type of story that we really hope we don’t have to read about again, especially in the newspapers. The author brought us the human impacts of such an act…the victims, the parents, the teachers and the perps. It is an examination of the human condition in which, it displays it’s ability for cruelty.

Rosamund Lupton ticked all of the boxes. She has weaved an intense web of mystery, an upsetting and haunting narrative that just won’t quit and the one thing that glues it altogether? Love. A storyline that is propelled by rocket fuel, hiding in plain sight. This book is setting the bar impossibly high for the start of 2020.

Three Hours is a book to remember. An original work of suspense. Hooked from the very first page. This is an amazing race-to-the-end thriller that you have been craving.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosamund Lupton, author of the sensational thriller book, Three Hours.

Rosamund Lupton is the author of four novels.

Rosamund Lupton graduated from Cambridge University in 1986. After reviewing books for the Literary Reviews and being invited to join the Royal Court Theatre, she won a television play competition and subsequently worked as a screen writer. Her debut novel Sister, was a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller, has been translated into over thirty languages and has international sales of over 1.5 million copies. It was the fastest-selling debut of 2010 by a British author, and was winner of the Richard and Judy Best Debut Novel of 2011 Award and the Strand Magazine Critics First Novel Award. Film rights of Sister are currently under option.

Lupton’s critically acclaimed second novel Afterwards also went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller lists and was the No. 2 Sunday Times fiction bestseller of 2011. The Quality of Silence her third novel was a Sunday Times best seller and a Richard & Judy bookclub pick

Her new novel Three Hours comes out on 9th January 2020.