Emma's Review: Together by Christmas by Karen Swan

 Reviewed by Emma Crowley

When Lee first came to Amsterdam, it was with a newborn baby and a secret. Five years later, her life is approaching normal: her career as a celebrity photographer is flourishing, her son Jasper is growing up, and they are enjoying the run-up to Christmas with their tight circle of close friends.

But all this changes one morning when Lee finds a book in the basket of her bicycle – and scrawled inside it, a desperate message. Who left it for her, and why? Lee feels compelled to help and tracks down the book’s author, Sam. With an instant, undeniable connection it seems they might have a shot at a real future together.

Until her past comes calling. As the snow falls and ice thickens on the city’s canals, the secret Lee has never told resurfaces. Suddenly everything she holds dear hangs in the balance. Christmas is a time for being together – but what if the truth means she ends up alone?

Book Links: Kindle or Paperback

Giveaway: Win a Summer Bookish bundle

As lockdown restrictions are easing, and my local post office which was part of a tourist gift shop has now reopened, I have decided to run a giveaway for a Summer bookish bundle. As regulars of the blog know I'm always on the lookout for items for giveaway prizes or presents for friends so I already had a couple of these items but then bought a couple of extra bits to make up the bundle.

Festive Fun: My Fantasy Christmas Dinner by Cressida McLaughlin

It's the final night of the Fantasy Christmas Dinner parties and it's time to find out just who author Cressida McLaughlin has invited for her evening of entertainment.

There are so many authors I admire and fangirl over on a daily basis, so the thought of having to only invite five to my fantasy Christmas dinner party is properly difficult –  though I guess if I had any more all the cooking and entertaining would start getting too complicated. 

My first author guest is escapist fiction superstar Karen Swan. Her books are an absolute must-read for me, and they’re full of beautiful locations, glamorous people and twisty, emotional storylines. I am sure she’s led a fascinating life, so having her at my dinner party would be wonderful, not least because it would be lovely to finally meet her. She also writes wonderful Christmas books that always fully immerse me in a festive wonderland, so she might even be able to give me a few tips on how to maximise the Christmassy feel of my dinner party. 

Second on the list is Elly Griffiths. I’ve met her quite a few times at events, and she is so lovely. She writes brilliant books set in Norfolk, and it would be lovely to have her back in Norfolk for my dinner party, though I’d have to resist asking her to give me plot spoilers for the next Ruth Galloway book, as I am desperate to know what happens. 

Emma's Review: The Christmas Party by Karen Swan

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

When Declan Lorne, the last remaining knight in Ireland, dies suddenly, an ancient title passes with him. But his estate on Ireland’s rugged south-west coast is left to his three daughters. The two eldest, Ottie and Pip, inherit in line with expectations, but to everyone’s surprise – and dismay – it is the errant baby of the family, Willow, who gets the castle.

Why her? Something unknown – something terrible - made her turn her back on her family three years earlier, escaping to Dublin and vowing never to return. So when Willow quickly announces she is selling up, her revenge seems sweet and the once-close sisters are pushed to breaking point: in desperation, Pip risks everything to secure her own future, and Ottie makes a decision that will ruin lives. It’s each woman for herself.

Before moving in, Connor Shaye, the prospective new owner, negotiates throwing a lavish party at the castle just days before Christmas – his hello, their goodbye. But as their secrets begin to catch up with them, Ottie, Willow and Pip are forced to ask themselves which is harder: stepping into the future, or letting go of the past?

Amazon Affiliate Links: Kindle or Paperback

Emma's Review: The Christmas Secret by Karen Swan

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Alex Hyde is the leaders’ leader. An executive coach par excellence, she’s the person the Great and the Good turn to when the pressure gets too much; she can change the way they think, how they operate, she can turn around the very fortunes of their companies.

Her waiting list is months’ long, but even she can’t turn down the unorthodox but highly lucrative crisis call that comes her way a few weeks before Christmas, regarding the troublesome – and troubled – head of an esteemed whisky company in Scotland: Lochlan Farquhar, CEO of Kentallen Distilleries, is a maverick, an enigma and a renegade, and Alex needs to get inside his head before he brings the company to its knees.

It should be business as usual. She can do this in her sleep. Only, when she gets to the remote island of Islay, with the winter snows falling, Alex finds herself out of her comfort zone. For once, she’s not in control - Lochlan, though darkly charismatic, is unpredictable and destructive, her usual methods gaining no traction with him - and with Christmas and her deadline fast approaching, she must win his trust and find a way to close on this deal.

But as she pulls ever closer to him, boundaries become blurred, loyalties loosen and Alex finds herself faced with an impossible choice as she realizes nothing and no-one is as they first seemed.

Amazon Affiliate Links: Kindle or Paperback

Emma's Review: The Rome Affair by Karen Swan

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

1974 and Elena Damiani lives a gilded life. Born to wealth and a noted beauty, no door is closed to her, no man can resist her. At twenty-six, she is already onto her third husband when she meets her love match. But he is the one man she can never have, and all the beauty and money in the world can't change it.

2017 and Francesca Hackett is living la dolce vita in Rome, leading tourist groups around the Eternal City and forgetting the ghosts she left behind in London. When she finds a stolen designer handbag in her dustbin and returns it, she is brought into the orbit of her grand neighbour who lives across the piazza - famed socialite Viscontessa Elena dei Damiani Pignatelli della Mirandola. Though the purse is stolen, Elena greets the return of the bag with exultation for it contains an unopened letter written by her husband on his deathbed, twelve years earlier.

Mutually intrigued by each other, the two women agree to collaborate on a project, with Cesca interviewing Elena for her memoirs. As summer unfurls, Elena tells her sensational stories, leaving Cesca in her thrall. But when a priceless diamond ring found in an ancient tunnel below the city streets is ascribed to Elena, Cesca begins to suspect a shocking secret at the heart of Elena's life.

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback 

Festive Giveaway: Win a copy of Christmas under the Stars by Karen Swan & Star Bookbandz

Today's giveaway is a dual celebration, not only is it a gorgeous festive giveaway bundle but it's also a celebration of my 2000th post on the blog 🎈🎉🎈 Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to ever reach this milestone and still be blogging over 5 years later but here I am 😊

So today I'm offering someone the chance to win a copy of Christmas under the Stars by Karen Swan, have also bought myself a copy to read over the festive break, together with a gorgeous Star Bookbandz (when I ordered this to be made I hadn't planned to pair it up with a book but then saw the title of this Karen Swan book and thought it would be a perfect match). 

Worlds apart. A love without limit.

In the snow-topped mountains of the Canadian Rockies, Meg and Mitch are living their dream. Just weeks away from their wedding, they work and play with Tuck and Lucy, their closest and oldest friends. Meg and Lucy are as close as sisters - much to Meg's sister's dismay - and Tuck and Mitch have successfully turned their passion for snowboarding into a booming business.

Emma's Review: The Paris Secret by Karen Swan

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

Not every door should be opened . . .

Somewhere along the cobbled streets of Paris, an apartment lies thick with dust and secrets: full of priceless artworks hidden away for decades.

High-flying fine art agent Flora from London, more comfortable with the tension of a million-pound auction than a cosy candlelit dinner for two, is called in to assess these suddenly discovered treasures. As an expert in her field, she must trace the history of each painting and discover who has concealed them for so long.

Thrown in amongst the glamorous Vermeil family as they move between Paris and Antibes, Flora begins to discover that things aren't all that they seem, while back at home her own family is recoiling from a seismic shock. The terse and brooding Xavier Vermeil seems intent on forcing Flora out of his family's affairs - but just what is he hiding?

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Christmas in July: Karen Swan - Christmas in the Snow

Reviewed by Emma Crowley

No secret stays buried forever...

In London, the snow is falling and Christmas is just around the corner - but Allegra Fisher barely has time to notice. She's pitching for the biggest deal of her career and can't afford to fail. And when she meets attractive stranger, Sam Kemp, on the plane to the meeting, she can't afford to lose her focus either. She learned to shut off her emotions long ago and only her sister and best friend Isobel knows why. But when Allegra finds herself up against Sam for the bid, their passion quickly turns sour.

In Zermatt in the Swiss Alps, a long-lost mountain hut is discovered in the snow after sixty years and the last person expecting to become involved is Allegra - she hasn't even heard of the woman they found inside. But it soon becomes clear the two women are linked and, as she and Iz travel out to make sense of the mystery, hearts thaw and dark secrets are uncovered, long buried by the snow.

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback

Author Interview: Karen Swan

Over the years I have become a massive fan of Karen Swan's writing having enjoyed reading most of her books although I still haven't read last year's Christmas book Christmas in the Snow which is still waiting patiently for me to read it.  

So when I was asked to be part of the blog tour for her latest book Summer at Tiffany's, which was published yesterday, I didn't hesitate to say yes so it's my pleasure to welcome Karen to the blog for a chat. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book Summer at Tiffany's? 
It’s a sequel to Christmas at Tiffanys although it can be read as a standalone story. It picks up on where we left off with the characters eighteen months earlier – Cassie and Henry are newly engaged, Suzy and Archie are new parents, Kelly and Brett are newlyweds…Everything’s bright and shiny but shadow spots are appearing in all their lives and when, one day, there’s a terrible accident, their prettily-laid out plans are thrown into the air. One character’s life hangs in the balance, relationships hang by a thread and there’s a devastating clash between past and present.

It's been a few years since we first met Cassie in Christmas at Tiffany's, had you always planned to write a follow-up or is this something that has crept up on you over the years?  I never had any intention of writing a sequel, although the clamour of calls for it from readers was deafening. To be honest, I thought the story of the Christmas book was so well crafted, I couldn’t possibly do justice with a follow-up. I didn’t want to dismantle the almost-fairytale aspect to Cassie and Henry’s relationship or create farce with Suzy and Arch but tension has to be engineered somehow, in order to get those pages turning, and as far as I could see, that was what it would involve. 

But then I took a closer look at the reality of the issues they’d all been facing – Cassie had just spent ten years in another marriage and even with someone as wonderful as Henry to love her, there’s still going to be fallout from that. I realized that I could take a grittier angle on their lives without undermining the strong bonds I’d created in the first book. 

Emma's Christmas Giveaway #2: Win a copy of Christmas in the Snow by Karen Swan

Today I have another genorous giveaway for you from guest reviewer Emma which is for a copy of Christmas in the Snow by Karen Swan.

No secret stays buried forever... 

In London, the snow is falling and Christmas is just around the corner - but Allegra Fisher barely has time to notice. She's pitching for the biggest deal of her career and can't afford to fail. And when she meets attractive stranger, Sam Kemp, on the plane to the meeting, she can't afford to lose her focus either. She learned to shut off her emotions long ago and only her sister and best friend Isobel knows why. But when Allegra finds herself up against Sam for the bid, their passion quickly turns sour. 

Books Read: Karen Swan - The Summer without You

Rowena Tipton isn't looking for a new life, just a new adventure; something to while away the months as her long-term boyfriend presses pause on their relationship before they become engaged. But when a chance encounter at a New York wedding leads to an audition for a coveted house-share in the Hamptons - the beach scene for Manhattan's elite - suddenly a new life is exactly what she's got.

Stretching before her is a summer with three eclectic housemates, long days on white-sand beaches and parties on gilded tennis courts. But high rewards bring high stakes and Rowena soon finds herself caught in the crossfire of a vicious intimidation campaign. Alone for the first time in her adult life, she has no one to turn to but a stranger who is everything she doesn't want - but possibly everything she needs.

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback 

Guest Post: Tackling the dreaded 'Writers Block' by Karen Swan

I was thrilled to be invited to take part in Karen Swan's blog tour for her latest book The Summer Without You, Karen has written a fab piece about how she overcame the dreaded 'Writer's Block' whilst writing this novel.

Before writing this book, ‘Writer’s block’ was something that happened to other authors, not me. When people asked me if I’d ever ‘had’ it, my response was always very bluff: ‘I don’t have time’  or ‘It’s a luxury I can’t afford.’ To me, writing is a business, not a hobby or a higher calling. I love it  but I also have a real and enforceable responsibility to deliver on time to my publishers – there’s a big team of people involved backstage in producing every book – as well as to my readers who want reliability and regularity from me; I suppose I saw the famed ‘writer’s block’ as a bit of melodrama, a self-indulgence that furthered the mystery of the creative process.

Christmas Reading Challenge: Karen Swan - Christmas at Claridge's

‘This was where her dreams drifted to if she didn’t blot her nights out with drink; this was where her thoughts settled if she didn’t fill her days with chat. She remembered this tiny, remote foreign village on a molecular level and the sight of it soaked into her like water into sand, because this was where her old life had ended and her new one had begun.’ 

Portobello – home to the world-famous street market, Notting Hill Carnival and Clem Alderton. She’s the queen of the scene, the girl everyone wants to be or be with. But beneath the morning-after makeup, Clem is keeping a secret, and when she goes too far one reckless night she endangers everything – her home, her job and even her adored brother’s love. 

Portofino – a place of wild beauty and old-school glamour, and where a neglected villa has been bought by a handsome stranger. He wants Clem to restore it for him and it seems like the answer to all her problems – except that Clem has been there once before and vowed, for her own protection, never to return...

Amazon links: Kindle or Paperback 

Books Read: Karen Swan - Christmas at Tiffany's

Source - Received free via Bookmooch

Three cities. Three seasons. One chance to find the life that fits.

Cassie settled down too young, marrying her first serious boyfriend. Now, ten years later, she is betrayed and broken. With her marriage in tatters and no career or home of her own, she needs to work out where she belongs in the world and who she really is.

So begins a year-long trial as Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with each of her best friends in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris and London. Exchanging grouse moor and mousy hair for low-carb diets and high-end highlights, Cassie tries on each city for size as she attempts to track down the life she was supposed to have been leading, and with it, the man who was supposed to love her all along.