Sunday 21 February 2016

Book Review - Please Don't Leave Me Here by Tania Chandler - Winning Reads #7

Winning Reads #7
Another week, and another book that I won and then needed to find the extra motivation to pick up in amongst a lot of the other books that I receive! 

  As I enter a large amount of competitions for books, and have a reasonable degree of luck, over the past year or two, my paperback mountain has grown out of control mainly due to being a bit lucky, and then not remembering to pick the books up and read them. 

Now I have a blog, I find it harder to not just stick the the brand new shiny releases the whole time, but I do want to read all these other books, so while I have a stash of them, here is Winning Reads, my weekly feature for Sundays.

Amazon UK
Title: Please Don't Leave Me Here
Author: Tania Chandler
Format reviewed: Paperback
Source: Competition Win
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Publication Date: 24th September 2015
Rating: 4 Stars


A riveting psychological thriller. Kurt Cobain stands at the top of the stairs, wearing the brown sweater. 'Please don't leave me,' she yells up at him. But it's too late; he's turning away as the tram slows for the stop out on the street. Then she's lying on the road. Car tyres are going past, slowly. Somebody is screaming. A siren howls. Sweet voices of little children are singing 'Morningtown Ride'. Is Brigitte a loving wife and mother, or a cold-blooded killer? Nobody knows why she was in the east of the city so early on the morning she was left for dead by a hit-and-run driver. It was the Friday before Christmas 1994 - the same day police discovered the body of a man beaten to death in her apartment. Fourteen years later, Brigitte is married to the detective who investigated the murder, which she claims to have lost her memory of in the car accident. They have young twins, and seem to be a happy family. Until the reopening of the cold case.

Please Don't Leave Me Here is about loss, love and lies. It is about pain, fear, and memory. And, above all, it is about letting go.

I found that Please Don't Leave Me Here is one of those books that just gets better and better as it goes along, until you have to keep reading as you really want to know the outcome. 

Brigit has no memory of the day that caused her to have a bad accident, 14 years ago, and yet on the same day, a man is found dead in her apartment. 

The whole of part one, was about Brigit's current life and her disturbing frame of mind, especially when a new detective opens the cold case of the dead man in her apartment. She is now married with young children, and the arrival of this new detective into her life, sends her on an emotional rollercoaster. 

Part one, ends in such a shocking way, I almost didn't want to read part two, knowing it was the past, to get back to the present of part three...but of course I did read them all in order thankfully. The second part which is the events leading up to the night that Brigit can no longer remember, are gripping and very compulsive reading. They are gritty and paint in some respects a surprising picture of a young Brigit, and in other areas of her life, I had suspected certain things may have been involved, and I was correct. 

What I did find slightly confusing and off putting  are the hallucinations of Kurt Cobain, and although I do sort of realise why she was having them, I felt it could have been explained a bit clearer. 

Despite some fantastically compelling storytelling and narrative up until the end, I wasn't that impressed with the ending, it just fell flat and anti climatic to me, which is such a shame, from a great build up. 

2 comments:

  1. Great review Rachel, I get like that too with time jumps, you just want to keep going on the current time line. Sounds like a good one, will keep an eye out for it.

    Lainy http://www.alwaysreading.net

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Lainy, I was really enjoying the present time, but the next section was good too. Definitely think its your sort of book.

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