Friday, September 13, 2019

BLOG TOUR - My Name is Eva


Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for My Name is Eva by Suzanne Goldring.

DESCRIPTION:

You can pay a terrible price for keeping a promise…

Evelyn Taylor-Clarke sits in her chair at Forest Lawns Care Home in the heart of the English countryside, surrounded by residents with minds not as sharp as hers. It would be easy to dismiss Evelyn as a muddled old woman, but her lipstick is applied perfectly, and her buttons done up correctly. Because Evelyn is a woman with secrets and Evelyn remembers everything. She can never forget the promise she made to the love of her life, to discover the truth about the mission that led to his death, no matter what it cost her…

When Evelyn’s niece Pat opens an old biscuit tin to find a photo of a small girl with a red ball entitled ‘Liese, 1951’ and a passport in another name, she has some questions for her aunt. And Evelyn is transported back to a place in Germany known as ‘The Forbidden Village,’ where a woman who called herself Eva went where no one else dared, amongst shivering prisoners, to find the man who gambled with her husband’s life…

A gripping, haunting and compelling read about love, courage and betrayal set in the war-battered landscape of Germany. Fans of The Letter, The Alice Network and The Nightingale will be hooked.   
MY THOUGHTS:

Title:   My Name is Eva
Author:  Suzanne Goldring
Genre:   Historical Fiction; Women's Fiction
Publisher:  Bookouture
Format:  Kindle ARC
No. of Pages:   348
Date of Publication:  September 11, 2019
My Rating:  4.5 Stars

She had many names. Evelyn Taylor-Clarke. Mrs. T-C to the caring home staff. Aunt Evelyn to her niece Pat, and Eva during her years of service during World War II. All of these names represent various sides to Evelyn that she manages to hide from many, during various stages of her life.

Presently, her niece Pat is helping her clear her home, as Evelyn is now in her nineties  and, after breaking a hip, is unlikely to ever live there again. Pat is continually bringing different items to her aunt because she has many questions. Some the things include a photo of a little girl from 1951, a cache of weapons and odd clothing.

It is the weapons found that drastically change things for Evelyn. Pat is soon often accompanied by a detective at the Care Home. He has many questions about the things that were found, and even about a man who when missing years previously. However, as far as Pat, the staff and now the detective are concerned, Evelyn is all but senile, and her memory is unreliable.

Evelyn has a secret. Actually she has many, many secrets. For starters, her mind is as sharp as a tack, and she is simply play-acting. Furthermore, the story is told in varying timelines and readers are clued in to Evelyn's duplicitous nature and some of the activities she was engaged in during and after the war.

What a tangled web she wove! Young or old, Evelyn set out a path. During the war she had an objective. She never, ever lost sight of it and carried out her plans with exact precision. This book was equally startling and compelling. Kudos to Suzanne Goldring for writing such an impressive debut novel.

Many thanks to Bookouture and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Following an eventful career as a public relations consultant, specialising in business and travel, Suzanne Goldring turned to writing the kind of novels she likes to read, about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. Two of her novels have been placed in the Winchester Writers' Conference First Three Pages of a Novel competition. Her novel The Way We Lied, can be read as a serial on her blog site, http://www.suzannegoldring.wordpress.com

She is currently working on a novel about delusion,deception and death, set in Corfu. 

Suzanne drew on her experiences of living in a timbered 14th century house, where she raised two daughters and a variety of livestock, to write Powerless. All her other novels are pure fiction and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.  




6 comments:

  1. I love Historical Fiction. This sounds like my type of book.

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  2. Great review, this book looks and sounds absolutely amazingly fantastic, I'm really glad you fully enjoyed reading this book. Thank you so much for sharing your awesome post.

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  3. Loos like a good book but not my preferred genre.

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  4. This is also a very good post which I really enjoy reading. It is not everyday that I have the possibility to see something like this. brand names

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