Books Read: The Mother's Secret by Clare Swatman

Love keeps us together

Sisters Kate and Georgie have always shared a close bond. While Kate enjoyed the freedoms of youth, Georgie remained at home. But now Georgie is grown up, it’s time she started exploring.

Love can tear us apart

Their mother Jan loves her daughters with all her heart. So what if she kept them out of sight when they were young? She just cared for them so much. She wanted to protect them.

What if your life was based on a lie?

Maybe there was another reason for Jan’s protective behaviour? If they ventured too far afield, it might destroy the facade of their childhood. This family’s about to discover that while lies can cause pain, the truth could destroy them all.

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Debut Spotlight: Clare Swatman

Today it's my pleasure to welcome author Clare Swatman for the final stop of the blog tour for her debut novel Before You Go which is publishing in hardback format tomorrow (eBook is already out and the paperback will be published later in the Summer).

Clare Swatman is a journalist for a number of weekly women's magazines. Clare was Features Editor for Bella and has written for Best, Woman's Own and Real People. She writes for her local magazine as well as the travel pages for Take a Break.  Clare lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and two boys.

Before You Go is her first novel, and she's busy working on her second.

If you had to give an elevator pitch for your debut novel Before You Go, what would it be? 
Ooh that’s mean, these are one of the toughest things to do! OK, how about ‘it’s a big hearted love story about enduring love, second chances, 1990s music, with a bit of time travel mixed in’? 

Before You Go revolves around Zoe having to come to terms with the loss of her husband Ed in traumatic circumstances, what inspired you to write such an emotional story for your debut? 
It was probably the many years I spent writing true life stories for magazines. Sometimes, people have the most amazing stories that you’d never think up yourself. Talking to people going through tough times and listening to the way they react made me think about how amazing people are, and how strong. I wanted to explore that, and thinking about how someone would react if they were given the chance to go back and change something terrible happening to someone they loved seemed like the perfect way of doing that. As it turns out, that’s pretty emotional!

Did Before You Go turn out the way you had planned or did you find the story taking you in a completely different direction once you started writing?  
I had the seed of the idea for ages and then it came to me in an epiphany, exactly how I wanted it to work. I sat down and wrote a chapter-by-chapter synopsis that very night. Of course it’s changed a lot since that early outline, but the story is essentially the same. I always knew where it was going, even if the way it got there changed a bit along the way. 

Describe Zoe in three words.
Loyal. Determined. Flawed.