The Silent Wife by Kerry Fisher #BlogTour @bookouture

Today I am delighted to be on the blog tour for Kerry Fisher and The Silent Wife.

About this book…

Would you risk everything for the man you loved? Even if you knew he’d done something terrible?

Lara’s life looks perfect on the surface. Gorgeous doting husband Massimo, sweet little son Sandro and the perfect home. Lara knows something about Massimo. Something she can’t tell anyone else or everything Massimo has worked so hard for will be destroyed: his job, their reputation, their son. This secret is keeping Lara a prisoner in her marriage.

Maggie is married to Massimo’s brother Nico and lives with him and her troubled stepdaughter. She knows all of Nico’s darkest secrets – or so she thinks. The one day she discovers a letter in the attic which reveals a shocking secret about Nico’s first wife Caitlin. Will Maggie set the record straight or keep silent to protect those she loves?

For a family held together by lies, the truth will come at a devastating price.

My review…

I do love a twisty family drama, one full of secrets and lies that you read with just the slightest tinge of smugness as you can see what is about to happen miles before our poor characters do. But Kerry Fisher always managed to pull something delectably different out of the bag and here she managed to throw a few curveballs, keeping us in our toes right to the very end!

The days of the traditional mum, dad and their 2.4 children have long gone now and family dynamics have changed dramatically due to the extended family. Step-parents are pretty much the norm nowadays so it was rather interesting to see how differently the two second wives coped within their new families. Finding their feet without tripping up over  family traditions or trying to live up to wife number one seem to be the constants here although Maggie seems to have a tougher time adjusting to her new role than Lara. But Lara appears to have worse problems within her marriage to contend with.

Kerry Fisher has created a tangled web of lies and indiscretions here with characters that I really came to care about and think of as friends. I took to Maggie, especially, right from the first time we get to meet her at her wedding to Nico. And when her mum Beryl was introduced into the plot, I realised where Maggie had inherited her strengths of character from and that it would hopefully help her adjust to married life as a second wife and stepmother to a teenage girl. Beryl was hilarious and I think my goal in life now is to be “a bit more Beryl”. Straight talking, forthright and hilarious and always had the perfect story to tell or the perfect treat on hand at just the right time.

Perfectly paced and plotted I loved following this family drama through to it’s climatic finale. It was slightly darker than Kerry’s other books but still with a subtle but mischievous humour at times. This book was originally called The Secrets of Second Wifes and if I’m honest I think that represents the plot better than The Silent Wife but it made no difference once my head was stuck between the pages. An enjoyable experience from start to finish!

Many thanks to Kim at Bookouture for my copy of The Silent Wife which I have chosen to read and review.

The Silent Wife: A gripping emotional page turner with a twist that will take your breath away is published by Bookouture on 24th February 2017 and can be of at Amazon UK.

Meet the author…

Born in Peterborough, Kerry Fisher studied French and Italian at Bath University, followed by several years working as an English teacher in Corsica and Spain before topping the dizzying heights of holiday rep and grape picker in Tuscany. She eventually succumbed to ‘getting a proper job’ and returned to England to study Periodical Journalism at City University. After two years working in the features department at Essentials magazine in London, love carried her off to the wilds of the West Pennine moors near Bolton. She now lives in Surrey with her husband (of whisking off to Bolton fame), two teenagers and a very naughty lab/schnauzer called Poppy. Kerry can often be seen trailing across the Surrey Hills whistling and waving pieces of chicken while the dog practises her ‘talk to the tail’. In her third book, After The Lie, Kerry shamelessly exploits every embarrassing dog misdemeanour to create her fictional hound, Mabel.

Kerry has spent half her life talking about writing a novel, then several years at Candis magazine reviewing other people’s but it wasn’t until she took some online courses with the UCLA (University of California) that the dream started to morph into reality, culminating in the publishing of The Class Ceiling. The Avon imprint of HarperCollins picked it up and retitled it The School Gate Survival Guide, published summer 2014. Her second book, The Island Escape, came out in May 2015. It won first prize at the York Festival of Writing for the opening line: ‘I was wearing the wrong bra for sitting in a police cell’. Her latest book, After The Lie, the story of how small lies become more toxic as they pass down the generations, is out on 29 April 2016.

After the Lie by Kerry Fisher

About this book…

Your past will devastate your family. But your lies could destroy them. What would YOU do?

Sometimes a lie can split your life in two. There is “before”, and there is “after”. Try as you might – you can never go back.

When Lydia was a teenager, she made a decision that ruined her family’s life. They’ve spent the last thirty years living with the consequences and doing their best to pretend it never happened.

Lydia’s husband, the gorgeous and reliable Mark, and her two teenage children know nothing about that summer back in 1982. And that’s the way Lydia wants it to stay. The opportunity to come clean is long gone and now it’s not the lie that matters, it’s the betrayal of hiding the truth for so long.

When someone from the past turns up as a parent at the school gates, Lydia feels the life she has worked so hard to build slipping through her fingers. The more desperate she becomes to safeguard her family, the more erratic her behaviour becomes. But when the happiness of her own teenage son,Jamie, hangs in the balance, Lydia is forced to make some impossible decisions. Can she protect him and still keep her own secret – and if she doesn’t, will her marriage and family survive?

My review…

This was the first book I have read by Kerry Fisher and it certainly won’t be the last! I knew as soon as I started reading this book that it was going to be one I would totally identify with and I was right!

After the Lie has at its heart a secret, one that Lydia has been hiding from everyone for years, since 1982 to be accurate. In the eighties something happened to Lydia that was so colossal she changed her name and then her family had to move away from their home in a small village in Norfolk. Now though, she is happily married to hardworking Mark, has two teenage children and a successful business. But meeting a new family, who have just moved back from the States is about to bring that past back to haunt Lydia but this time she’s not the only one that could get hurt.

I do love a good family drama full of relationship misunderstandings and hidden secrets! Kerry Fisher has written a great book here with a wickedly dark humour and perfectly observed anecdotes about family life. The small town mentality and that “schoolgate” hierarchy are totally believable and the scenes where the committee had their meetings had me chuckling at how true to life it was. It brought back memories of all the competitiveness of school mums and the cliques that exist within groups of grown women! The story itself wasn’t quite what I was expecting and neither was “the big secret” but in a good way as it kept me guessing throughout.

Most of all I absolutely loved Lydia. She was funny and real with a sense of duty, a mother who had a good relationship with both her children (despite her over protectiveness!) and her husband (although he too is unaware of her secret!). She was typical of a woman of her generation caught between teenage children and her aging parents. I think it helped that I related to Lydia due to being a similar age (and size!) and also having grown up in the Eighties. We were so lucky then not to have to deal with social media demanding our every minute and recording our mistakes for posterity!

I will certainly be looking out for more books by Kerry Fisher as I enjoy her writing style and the social commentary that she does so well while bringing us current issues surrounding today’s families.

I received a copy of this book via netgalley in return for an unbiased review.

Publication date 28th April 2016

Available to order from Amazon