#TheHome - Sarah Stovell - Blog Tour and Review @OrendaBooks

The Home - Sarah Stovell - Blog Tour and Review 

I am delighted to be part of the Blog Tour for the latest psychological chiller by Sarah Stovell.

I loved this twisty psychological masterpiece brimming with terrible secrets and desperate lies.

My Review

The Home is a compelling story of 3 teenage girls, Hope, Annie and Lara, living in a care home for deeply traumatized youngsters from difficult backgrounds, in the Lake District. They are the forgotten girls, the unwanted girls, the tragic product of families broken beyond repair.

We learn right at the beginning of the storytelling that one of them is dead. Pregnant and Dead - a tragic shame. 

In a series of flashbacks, and sometimes in the dead girls own voice, heard from beyond the grave as if there is something or someone she just can't let go, we learn the terrible tragedies which have befallen them. 

The main two characters the story focusses on are Hope and Annie, they are in an intense and passionate relationship with one another. As all 3 girls stories and tragic backgrounds unfold, it becomes apparent that none is a reliable narrator, and even their well-documented backgrounds of abuse and terror are rather subjective. 

There are some pretty graphic scenes of child abuse and trauma, yet despite the girls obvious fragility and unreliability I grew to like them, they are survivors. But mystery surrounds the murder or possibly suicide and only one girl can reveal exactly what happened in the youngsters tragic final moments, but she’s not telling.

It’s hardly surprising, given their abusive and violent backgrounds that each girl has secrets she wants to keep hidden but maybe one of them is covering up even more than you could possibly imagine.

It is an utterly gripping book, told with style and panache and with the brooding fells of the Lake District as a backdrop it captivated me entirely.

Following the authors remarkable debut – Exquisite which also focuses on flawed relationships and unreliable narrators, this is a slick and tension filled drama/ mystery with a creeping sense of menace and dread throughout and a superb twist in the tail, which I love in a psychological thriller.

I received my review copy of #TheHome by @sarahlovescrime through #Randomthingstours @OrendaBooks 

Want to buy your own copy? try here

The Blurb

When the body of pregnant, fifteen-year-old Hope Lacey

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 dark and devastating psychological thriller, The Home is also

a heartbreaking and insightful portrayal of the underbelly

of society, where children learn what they live … if they are

allowed to live at all.

The Author

Sarah Stovell

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.