Hi guys and gals!
Welcome back to Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers.
Today, we're shining the book spotlight on a new novella from author Holly Brown. A novella, you ask? Why yes...sometimes we just need something shorter and sweeter...or not sweet seeing has there is not a lot of sweetness running around the synopsis. This particular title falls in the Thriller/Suspense category and, from the the sound of things, will have you on the edge of your seat til the fast approaching finale. Ready or not, readers, here comes today's spotlight title...
by
Holly Brown
9780062655127
William Morrow Impulse
About the book...
"A mother is just a woman who gave birth to you. You don’t need her to like you, or love you. Because a mother’s just another person.
She was. And now she’s dead.”
Growing up, Rae played the good girl, hoping to win her mother Marlene’s love. But Marlene favored Rae’s dangerous older brother Thomas, even after he nearly got teenage Rae killed. The night Thomas disappeared was the best night of Rae’s life.
Now 28 years old and engaged, Rae is nursing Marlene, who has advanced cancer and one last request: for Rae to find Thomas and bring him home.
Thomas purports to be a changed man, the CEO of his own meteorically successful company. But Rae knows he’s hiding something. When Marlene takes a turn for the worse, is it assisted suicide or murder?
The answer goes back decades, through secrets and pain, and comes back full circle. Rae has to figure out who she can really trust. Or else.
Poor little good girl . . . who’ll save her now?
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Sounds interesting?
Good!
Now, let's dig a little bit deeper...
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~~~ EXCERPT ~~~
RAE
Right Now
My mother is dead.
The worsening of her illness was inexorable, and this ending inevitable. Hospice workers have been coming to the house for weeks—palliative measures only, the relief of suffering without treatment, comfort without cure. They were very clear on this point. There should have been no room for denial.
But somehow, when it’s your mother, you deny until the end.
It’s not like a dance recital, and you can practice, practice, practice. There is no preparation, not really. I’ve never lived in a world without her. Marlene Joy Kalatchik. Mom. Mommy.
No one else has ever leveled me with a look like she could; no one else could affirm or destroy like my mother. She was the repository for all my insecurities. She fed them, unknowingly. I like to think unknowingly. Simon says otherwise, but he first met her a year ago, and given the cancer, she wasn’t herself. Not exactly.
My mother is dead.
I say it out loud, experimentally, full of wonder as much as pain. Impossible. I whisper it. I touch my tongue to it, like it’s a loose tooth.
Simon is beside me, and he’s got his arm around me, he’s murmuring something, but I can’t seem to hear it. I can’t feel him. There’s nothing but her, nothing but absence and loss and something else, just out of sight, just beyond my reach.
Natural causes. I think that’s what the coroner will say, even if it was by her own hand. A hand that was coerced by someone else, or a hand that’s an extension of hers, because isn’t that what family is? An extension. A proxy. A way to go on.
Thomas is staring down at her, too, his expression inscrutable. No, it’s not her. Already, it’s her body.
He shouldn’t be here. Why didn’t he just stay gone?
I wish I’d said no, I won’t find him, let the past be the past, it’s just us now, Mom, and that’s enough. I should have tried harder to convince her that I’m enough, though that had already been a lifelong project, a study in futility and false hope. I’ve been flexing my denial muscle for a long time. And yet…
I think I see Thomas and Simon exchange some sort of look. I’ve seen that look before. There’s mischief in it. No, mirth. No, it’s the satisfaction of collusion. Like they’re in it together.
No. Simon’s here for me, and Thomas is here for himself, just like always. Simon’s mine.
And if I’m wrong about that? Then what do I have?
My mother is dead.
My mother’s body is dead. Her spirit? Does that continue?
It must. Because suddenly, I feel it here. I feel her, like radiant heat whooshing up from the floorboards, filling the room. She’s always been larger than life, in my eyes. Illness couldn’t shrink her. Maybe death can’t, either.
We were closer in those last days. She told me something I’d waited my whole life to hear, and now: She has a message for me. There are things I’ve never known, and I need to. I’ve always sensed them, the secrets, like movement in my peripheral vision. I could never turn my head quickly enough.
But she wants me to know now. It’s time.
I lean in close, and listen.
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About the author...
Holly Brown lives with her husband and toddler daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she's a practicing marriage and family therapist. She is the author of the novel Don't Try to Find Me, and her blog, "Bonding Time," is featured on the mental health website PsychCentral.com.
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Special thanks to Julie at HarperCollins for the heads up on this release. (THANKS!) For more information on this title, the author, or the publisher, feel free to click through the links provided above. This title is available now via William Morrow Impulse, so be on the lookout for it on a bookstore shelf or virtual retailer of your choosing.
Until next time, remember...if it looks good, READ IT!
"I grew up in rural Derbyshire, but my adult life has been spent mostly in London, with long intervals in Norfolk and Deal, all inspiring places. I was educated mostly in convent schools; then studied English and went on to qualify as a solicitor, working for what is now the Crown Prosecution Service, thus learning a bit about murder at second hand. Years later, writing became the real vocation, although the law and its ramifications still haunt me and inform many of my novels.
