The Secret Baby Room by D.D. Johnston

  
  The Secret Baby Room by D.D. Johnston

 Claire Wilson knows what she saw: on the eighth floor of a derelict tower block, a woman was bottle-feeding a baby. But why would anyone take a baby into a boarded-up tower block? In an area of Manchester plagued by unexplained tragedies, the only allies Claire can find are a pagan witch, a wild-child party girl, and a husband with too many secrets.

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Read an excerpt from the book:

On Sunday morning at 9:15 a.m., Claire was escorted to Interview Room 3. She was relieved to be out of the cell but self-conscious about her stale breath and unwashed body. Her jeans smelled of damp, and dried blood covered her right hand where she had grazed her knuckles kayaking.

​And then it occurred to her, as she was waiting alone in the interview room, how ridiculous these thoughts were. What did it matter? So much of her life she had spent caring about the wrong things: what did it matter whether she had stale breath? What difference did it really make if her bra was visible through her shirt? Why did she care about her BMI or her… underarm fat. Underarm fat! Who even decided such a thing should be added to the catalogue of female worries? It was all absurd. She remembered that as she was being driven to the police station, her hands cuffed behind her back, among her many terrors was the thought that she might be strip-searched. As much as she feared the violence of the act, she had also worried because her legs were unshaved and it had been ages since she’d attended to her bikini line. What a moment at which to worry about depilation! ‘Who cares?’ she said aloud. ‘Who cares?’

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My review:
Ok, I have to first off say, the blurb didn’t quite describe the book I read. I thought there would be more suspense in the story. I felt like it took a little too much time to get to the actual plot of the book. It all seemed a little disjointed. The plot points did end up tying together for the most part in the end, but I’m still not sure how Seth and Jack actually fit into the story other than a bridge to another character. Or how the church and the Polish guy made a difference to the plot. I saw where the author was going with it but it seemed to fizzle out.

I really did like Claire’s character. She was fiesty and determined. Lianne was a pretty nicely developed character too but Morgana just annoyed me. I could totally see this being a good mini series or movie if the plot is polished up. It reads almost like a script at times.

The book started to really cruise along in the end, got really good and than BAM. It ended. I was dying for an epilogue! Seriously with a little more editing and cleaning up this will be a killer book. It really is a good story, the characters are cool and not much is lost in translation with the Mancester slang. I definitley will keep an eye out for more of the authors work because I do like his writing voice.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
 
D.D. Johnston’s first novel, Peace, Love, & Petrol Bombs, was a Sunday Herald Book of the Year in 2011 and is published in Spanish as Paz, amor y cócteles molotov. His experimental second novel, The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub, was a 2013 book of the year in The Morning Star, where it was described as “determinedly extraordinary”. He lives in Cheltenham, UK, and works at the University of Gloucestershire, where he is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing and a University Teaching Fellow. In his spare time he runs the OnlineWritingTips.com website.
 
http://ddjohnston.org

@dd_johnston

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Secret-Baby-Room-D-D-Johnston/dp/1909954187
http://onlinewritingtips.com

 
The author will be awarding a $30 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour
tour schedule: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2015/04/review-tour-secret-baby-room-by-dd.html
a Rafflecopter giveaway