Blog Tour: My Sweet Friend by H.A. Leuschel [Review + Giveaway]

My Sweet Friend
by: H.A. Leuschel

Publication Date: December 6, 2017
Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Women’s Fiction

Synopsis

A stand-alone novella from the author of Manipulated Lives

A perfect friend … or a perfect impostor?
Alexa is an energetic and charismatic professional and the new member of a Parisian PR company where she quickly befriends her colleagues Rosie and Jack. She brings a much-needed breath of fresh air into the office and ambitiously throws herself into her new job and friendships.
But is Alexa all she claims to be?
As her life intertwines with Rosie and Jack’s, they must all decide what separates truth from fiction. Will the stories that unfold unite or divide them? Can first impressions ever be trusted?
In this original novella, H.A. Leuschel evokes the powerful hold of appearances and what a person is prepared to do to keep up the facade. If you like thought-provoking and compelling reads with intriguing characters, My Sweet Friend is for you.

Goodreads

Purchase link here

Review

My Sweet Friend is a well-paced and thought provoking character study. It structures the novella around the point of views of its two main characters, Rosie and Alexa. We soon learn that they were quick to become very good friends after Alexa gets hired to their office, both in the sales and marketing team. However, as it switches between a broken down Alexa on holiday in Biarritz and frantically scrambling to get a project done Rosie in Paris, the lies, secrets and manipulation start surfacing to the top. We start seeing the true colors of these characters, particularly Alexa. There’s a lot to love in this novella. Its writing style is fantastic and the description is incredibly vivid, making the characters come alive. This novella is also a breath of fresh air as it looks at a friendship between two women instead of a romance. While a third character, Jack, who is the manager gets involved as well as the ladies fight for his affection, he never becomes much of a key role. The first person narrative goes very well for this novella and the story it wants to tell.

Overall, My Sweet Friend is a really intriguing novella. Its paced well and takes its readers on a few mind games filled with lies and manipulation in this seemingly sweet friendship that breaks down as the characters reveal their true colors. My only criticism would be that the ending felt slightly lackluster, although to be fair, I have no idea how I would have preferred it to have ended. It still works in a thought-provoking way.

Goodreads: 4 out of 5 stars

Author Bio

Helene Andrea Leuschel grew up in Belgium where she gained a Licentiate in Journalism & Communication, which led to a career in radio and television in Brussels, London and Edinburgh. She now lives with her husband and two children in Portugal and recently acquired a Master of Philosophy with the OU, deepening her passion for the study of the mind. When she is not writing, Helene works as a freelance journalist and teaches yoga.

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads

Giveaway

Enter for your chance to win a digital copy (Format of Choice) of My Sweet Friend
Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/0e7c6a8f28/?

Tour Organized By:

 

 

A Good Marriage & 1922 by Stephen King

The original plan for Stephen King readings was to read his books or short stories in chronological order of release. Seeing as I read Carrie first. I even have Salem’s Lot sitting on my shelf. However, that other day that I forgot my Kindle at home and remembered that I picked up this one on sale during the holidays drove me to read it. For those who didn’t read my review, you can find it here.

This book includes two novellas. It starts with A Good Marriage and follows up with 1922. Let’s check it out!

A Good Marriage

A Good Marriage is an absolute page turner. The writing and suspense and thrills carries and builds at a great pace. We pretty much follow the voice of a wife that finds out a horrible secret of her husband. She has to choose to survive and make choices that can get her through it. The agony and conflict she feels along with the eventual disgust and all those feelings are captivated so well to make us feel what she is feeling. Her husband although is the source of the issue here also has chilling moments where we truly can feel why. Spontaneous coincidences are the unexpected factors in life and sometimes it leads to the events in A Good Marriage.

This novella excels in being able to communicate the inner feelings of our characters. For the first bit of the novella, we are only reading Darcy and the feelings she gets as she discovers that there’s something her husband is hiding. However, curiosity in the end does kill the cat. We learn a little about the marriage that how Darcy and Bob get together and their 25 years of marriage. We are acquainted with these characters quickly. The reveal of the secret is slower as well as we are deceived into a little secret that when Darcy chooses to let go momentarily results in consequent actions dealing with something much more unforgivable.

Its a little twisted and puts morals on the table as to how far you’d go to protect yourself. When does doing what everyone perceives as a bad thing become a good thing for the right reasons? So many layers and such brilliant character development, A Good Marriage is a great read.

1922

Very opposite of A Good Marriage, it is hard to pinpoint what makes 1922 feel much lesser in the Stephen King collection. I guess I can’t quite say that seeing as this is just the third work that I’ve ever read. However, it was a somewhat painful experience that seemed to only come to fruition at its finale. There is a lot of detail and skill in putting together this character Wilfred as we see his slow descent into madness and obsession probably driven by the metaphorical skeletons on his closet.

1922 is shown as a letter of confession, many years after he’s actually gotten away. Wilfred recounts the story in detail from his sentiments to telling about what happens to lead up to his decision to kill his wife. The characters here are not likeable. Wilfred is a little off-putting. Henry has a rather odd turnout and his wife particularly doesn’t exactly encourage or make us feel like she deserved a lot better although for her husband to kill her is also an extreme. However, the star here is Wilfred and in the incredible detail of what happened in 1922, the entire year of 1922 literally, it gets a little long and slow and unrewarding in many ways. The ending does pull everything together if the readers haven’t gathered already that Wilfred is greatly affected by murdering his wife and the consequent events. His obsession over believing that she was still alive after she was absolutely dead physically had a cloud over him (which is pretty understandable). In many ways, we can question whether Wilfred was as bad as he seems, perhaps the events of 1922 and the fact that he realized the obvious that if he didn’t do anything, things might not have been so extreme caused him incredible regret also. There are a ton of reasons and what-ifs.

While descriptively and character building wise, there is a haunting and disturbing feeling every once in a while, the story is very slow and feels not too engaging. However, if you do stick through it, the ending does have a resolution, that was surprisingly worth it (at least to me).

A Good Marriage and 1922 both are novellas focused on a psychological change in its main character and honestly focuses on the one voice and a particular situation.
A Good Marriage was definitely the superior one. Have you read either of these before? Thoughts?

The Lot (Short Story) by Anthony Renfro

Still looking for some Christmas themed short stories?

Fellow blogger Anthony Renfro from Poetry, Books, Movies and Music has a collection of them for the holidays. I already talked and reviewed A Zombie Christmas and its sequel, A Zombie Christmas 2 the last two weeks. You can find them HERE and HERE respectively. Now its time for another one!

Let’s check it out!

The Lot
by: Anthony Renfro

Synopsis

This short story is about a Christmas Tree lot that has evil intentions.

Excerpt

The Christmas tree lot stood cold and silent beside the two lane road now covered in 6 inches of snow. Gavin Douglas was hunkered down inside the small building attached to The Lot. He stood 6 foot 5, tall and lanky, a once healthy thirty-year-old man who now looked like he had spent the last two months inside a sweat box. He was emaciated and weak looking, ribs showing through his skin. His face hung droopy and long, teeth rotting away, some had fallen out. His once thick hair now hung thin, patchy, and lifeless across his skull. His clothes were dirty and disheveled, unclean like the rest of his body. He hadn’t been able to eat, sleep, shower, or do anything normal since the pine trees had arrived in October, because he felt like it was his job and duty to protect his town, a town he loved more than his own life.

My Review

Its hard to pinpoint what The Lot reminds me of. For one, its a bit like Little Shop of Horrors in some ways but then blends in something else in the end and makes you wonder. What I liked the most in The Lot is the vivid descriptions. It truly felt like I could picture the scene in front of me and watching the events unfold between Gavin and Ernie and the police at the Christmas tree lot. Its hard to not spoil The Lot but its a quick and fun read.

Where to get it 

US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JMX67U2#nav-subnav
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01JMX67U2
AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01JMX67U2
CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01JMX67U2

Short Story: A Zombie Christmas by Anthony Renfro

Christmas is just over 20 days away! I’m not prepared at all for anything on the blog for it. Luckily, there’s always something to highlight.

Today, I’d like to do some promotion for a fellow blogger Anthony over at Poetry, Books, Movies and Music with one of his short stories set during Christmas! Anthony has released a lot of impressive and entertaining short stories that I’ve personally liked a lot! This one is one of my favorites. You can check out my review HERE.

A Zombie Christmas
by Anthony Renfro

Synopsis

This short story is about three men who risk life and limb in a Zombie Apocalypse in order to bring happiness to surviving kids on Christmas Morning.

Excerpt

Mike Beem lowered his rifle, put his right eye on the scope, and closed his left eye. The zombie he was about to shoot was an ugly sucker. From what Mike could tell, this zombie used to be a man around five foot five or six, maybe seven. Hell, he couldn’t tell the exact height from just a tiny scope. Its suit was disheveled, full of dirt and blood (it looked fresh, a recent feast perhaps), and half of his face was gone. This zombie was currently investigating Mike’s Santa Claus and reindeer display. The zombie was studying it like he knew what it was or remembered what it was.

Where to get it

US: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004GUS7WS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004GUS7WS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
AU: http://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B004GUS7WS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
CA: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B004GUS7WS?*Version*=1&*entries*=0