Jenny Morton Potts

I have to be honest and say I found it really hard to get into this book, and the first chapter for me was confusing in that I wasn’t sure as who was saying what to whom. Once past this chapter though that all changed.

This Author writes her characters in a way that makes them real, as in the kind of person you probably meet during your everyday lives. The characters lives are laid open to the reader and then reconstructed to show how lives, and the events of those lives come together to join and eventually result in a relationship. The emotions and consequences of actions are beautifully and skilfully placed on the page that the reader cannot help but be pulled totally into the journey and complexities of human relationships. These characters are not the usual one dimensional figures that can be found in a book on this topic, they are deep, well developed and, as I said at the beginning of this paragraph wholly believable.

This Author has a talent for descriptive writing that I have not seen in a long while. They way in which they describe the most mundane of objects are incredible and leaves the reader looking at these items in a different way. Location descriptions do not suffer either; set in Brighton the Author is able to transport the reader to the town, have them at the train station and actually walking the streets as they read. Very well done, and such a treat to read on a cold winter evening. I found the title most intriguing as well, it had me visualising pianos falling from windows, or music floating out of windows on a quiet Sunday depending my mood when I picked this up to read.

I would highly recommend this book, especially to those readers who like a deeply descriptive novel, and look forward to reading other works by this Author in the future.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2015/01/12/2827/




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
… (plus d'informations)

I've only recently discovered Jenny Morton Potts' books and I'm still absolutely flabbergasted at the outstanding quality of writing that was displayed in Hiding. This quality naturally continues in Just but, whereas Hiding is very much a psychological thriller, this book is more of a bone-chilling thriller. Not in the gorey and gruesome horror sense, but more that you could totally imagine it happening in real life.

Luci's son, Scottie, is a volunteer medic for the Reach charity which aims to identify the remains of bodies that wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean. It's so sad and too often in the news about these poor people who leave their homeland searching for a better and safer life, having no idea that they are stepping onto boats that will never reach their destination. Scottie's boss is the mysterious Dr Fiyori Maziq who Scottie ends up falling for. At first I thought Fiyori was the obligatory love interest but I couldn't have been more wrong!

Luci doesn't even notice that her business partner, Finlay, has feelings for her as she is still so very bitter about the break up of her marriage. Luci point blank refuses to even name the new Mrs Langbrook never mind see a photo of her or, heaven forbid, meet her. Luci might not be able to put this off for much longer when she receives the news that her ex-husband has been killed when his car hit an elephant in Botswana. Obviously, Scottie gets his sense of adventure from his father but just how adventurous is he and how far is he willing to go to protect his family?

Without going into any details and giving the plot away, I felt as if a game of chess was being played out and the characters were carefully manipulated into place against their knowledge. That really scares the bejeezus out of me; trust is something we give quite easily but it is also very difficult to get back once it is lost. Unless you have the ability to read minds, you will never know what another person is thinking and whether they are being honest or manipulative.

I admit to being a bit confused at the beginning of Just as the story jumped from Luci and Finlay in Cornwall to Scottie and Fiyori in the Mediterranean, but I know that Jenny Morton Potts is a hugely talented writer so I just went with the flow, confident that the mist would lift and it would all become clear. Indeed it does, but there is no sun waiting to come out as this frighteningly true to life story chills you to the bone.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.… (plus d'informations)

Hiding draws you in immediately with two very strong and intriguing main characters: Rebecca Brown and Keller Baye. The reader is catapulted into such pivotal points in each character's life that it made me sit up and take notice, rubbing my hands in glee, at such juicy bait dangling from the line cast by Jenny Morton Potts. Now that's what I call hooked from the start.

Rebecca's story starts in 2007 when she becomes an orphan along with her older siblings: brother, Austen, and sister, Colette. When their parents are killed in a car crash they are sent to live with grandparents in Scotland at the family home called Taransay, or The Orphanage as the siblings refer to it. As Rebecca gets older she wants to know what happened to her parents but her family won't talk about it. Why? What are they hiding?

Fast forward to the not too distant future of 2021 and Keller Baye is heading to the prison to watch his father be put to death by lethal injection. Keller is already severely damaged as his time spent living with his cruel Aunt Joya has made him into the man he is today. The event that started all this was the moment his father shot a man in a failed bank robbery and now Keller is out for revenge.

The development of both main characters in Hiding is exceptional. I felt like I could see inside their heads and know what they were thinking and how they were feeling. I actually felt so sorry for both of them as they seemed so unhappy with their lives that they invent a new persona to escape who they really are. Rebecca reinvents herself as a comedian after a life spent feeling as if she didn't belong, her family has even taken her name away as they refer to her as 'Youngest Brown'. It might seem affectionate to them but I felt like it stole her identity. Meanwhile, Keller becomes quite the charmer with the ladies but he is not as controlled as Rebecca as his emotions can change at the flick of a switch.

I was wondering what the link was between Rebecca and Keller from the start and after some nicely built suspense, the pieces all start falling into place. The title of the book is woven so cleverly into the story, meaning very different things for Rebecca and Keller, but ultimately every character is Hiding something.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Hiding; it is so intriguing and compelling that I lost track of time while I was reading (I could have easily read it in one sitting if I'd picked it up on a weekend rather than a work night). Reading Hiding is like doing a jigsaw; you have all of the pieces but you can't see the full picture until the final piece is slotted into place. Hiding is an exceptional book that hooked me from the start and kept me riveted throughout; a well-deserved five stars.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.… (plus d'informations)

I have to be honest and say I found it really hard to get into this book, and the first chapter for me was confusing in that I wasn’t sure as who was saying what to whom. Once past this chapter though that all changed.

This Author writes her characters in a way that makes them real, as in the kind of person you probably meet during your everyday lives. The characters lives are laid open to the reader and then reconstructed to show how lives, and the events of those lives come together to join and eventually result in a relationship. The emotions and consequences of actions are beautifully and skilfully placed on the page that the reader cannot help but be pulled totally into the journey and complexities of human relationships. These characters are not the usual one dimensional figures that can be found in a book on this topic, they are deep, well developed and, as I said at the beginning of this paragraph wholly believable.

This Author has a talent for descriptive writing that I have not seen in a long while. They way in which they describe the most mundane of objects are incredible and leaves the reader looking at these items in a different way. Location descriptions do not suffer either; set in Brighton the Author is able to transport the reader to the town, have them at the train station and actually walking the streets as they read. Very well done, and such a treat to read on a cold winter evening. I found the title most intriguing as well, it had me visualising pianos falling from windows, or music floating out of windows on a quiet Sunday depending my mood when I picked this up to read.

I would highly recommend this book, especially to those readers who like a deeply descriptive novel, and look forward to reading other works by this Author in the future.


Originally reviewed on: http://catesbooknuthut.com/2015/01/12/2827/




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
… (plus d'informations)