I was lucky enough to be invited onto the blog tour for Close to Me.
Close to Me is the debut novel by Amanda Reynolds. The story focuses on Jo who fell down the stairs in her house. This fall caused her to lose any memory of the last year. As Jo starts trying to piece together what happened in this missing year, she begins to think people are hiding things from her. She slowly begins to get her memories back as she tries to work out whether she fell or was pushed?
This was an interesting book that I found quite compelling. The story is told from the viewpoint of Jo with chapters alternating between the past and present day. The writing within this novel was good and it was a fast easy read.
I enjoyed the premise of the story. The idea of having a whole year of your life missing was fascinating. A lot can happen in a year. Knowing that everyone around you knows what happened but you don’t, must be quite disturbing.
The majority of the story focuses on the dynamics within the family rather than just the mystery. The characters are interesting although on the whole I found them all difficult to warm to. Her husband is rather controlling, her daughter acts like a spoilt brat, and her son barely speaks. Jo was seemingly the only caring one as shown with her volunteer work. It was during this work she met Rosie and the relationship between them is probably one of the nicest within the story.
It was a different take on the domestic setting to have a long term relationship at the centre of the story, rather than a young ‘married too fast’ type. I also enjoyed the way the story goes backwards and forwards until the two collide.
I don’t think there was a huge amount of mystery involved as the story line was relatively straightforward and to me it seemed rather obvious. However that doesn’t distract from a very enjoyable read. This was a great debut novel and I’ll definitely be reading more from Amanda Reynolds.
A crime readers blog 