family sagas

Today I’m thrilled to be part of the blog tour for the lovely A Posy Of Promises by Sharon Dempsey!

Length: 192 pages

Please note that the cover image leads to a universal Amazon buy link for the book

What they say: What happens when the relationship you have taken for granted suddenly ends?

Ava Connors is comfortable with her life just as it is, still living in the tiny terrace house where she was brought up by her grandmother, Maggie, seeing her long-term boyfriend, Finlay, and working in a florists.

But Maggie’s health is declining and Finlay is fed up waiting for Ava to make a commitment.

Ava has never really known her mother, Scarlett, and when she inherits an old and dilapidated house it ignites an interest in the mother who had abandoned her as a child.

Why did Scarlett leave her to be brought up by her grandmother?

Soon Ava begins to ask this question and in turn sets off a series of events that will change her life forever.

A Posy of Promises looks at the relationships we have and the questions we ask of those we love.

The Review: We start this book with Ava Connors considering the property of ninety seven Mount Pleasant Square, where she was brought up by her grandmother, now in a home following a stoke. Ava had considered selling the house but is re-thinking as she goes over all the possibilities of it as somewhere for her, Ava, to settle. I loved that she was left the property while her grandmother was still alive, and that she didn’t know who had left it to her-a nice little pile of questions and secrets were already beginning to materialise!

I quickly settled into beautiful descriptions and ‘put you right there’ settings of Belfast, and the nicely timed unravelling of secrets via a letter that her grandmother had written, among other things. This book had a lighter feel to it than the cover, or indeed the genre implied (for me, I can be very judgy in that regard!) and I was happy that there were a few smiles along the way. I also loved when we started getting another side to the story. For me the thing I ached for was a mixture of who the mystery benefactor was, and also why her mother, the aptly named Scarlett, hadn’t been there when she was growing up. These things-the pieces of the puzzle you didn’t know, and the way they were linked up, as well as the near miss type scenarios, where you weren’t sure if certain characters would even meet, were done excellently and I found myself actually nervous at so many points! All in all such an enjoyable book, where I loved moving slightly outside my comfort zone and I look forward to book 2 in the trilogy to see where it goes next!

Thanks so much to Sarah at Bombshell books and to Netgalley for the book in return for an honest review.

Rating: 4/5

About the author

A Posy of Promises is Sharon Dempsey’s first contemporary women’s fiction novel.

Sharon is a Belfast based writer of fiction and non-fiction books, with four health books published. Her crime debut Little Bird was released July 2017 with Bloodhound Books.

She facilitates therapeutic creative writing classes for people affected by cancer and other health challenges, and runs a creative writing group for young people, called Young Scribblers, at the Crescent Arts Centre. She is a creative writing tutor at Queen’s University and Stranmillis College. Sharon studied Politics and English at Queen’s University, and undertook a newspaper journalism post grad at City University, London. She has written for a variety of publications and newspapers, including the Irish Times.

Sharon is working on the follow up to Little Bird and a collection of dark short stories.

Find her online:

Twitter @svjdempz

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sharondempseybooks/

Blog https://1stchapterdempsey.wordpress.com/

Instagram: sharondempseywrites

Now don’t forget to follow the tour!

B L O G B L I T Z (1)

Maybe Tomorrow Cover

Hi everyone, and welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Maybe Tomorrow by Erin Cawood and hosted by the amazing Chick Lit Plus. I’m so excited to have been able to interview Erin and also to share my review with you. Also, there’s some AMAZING giveaways!!

What they say: Welcome to the FORGIVE OR FORGET series, a compelling contemporary women’s fiction love story and family saga series. Cawood’s love inspired medical romance series follows the close-knit McGowan siblings; Keon, Kiera, Cormack, and Cara, as they face the difficult choice between forgiving or forgetting true love after a broken heart.
Does a heart ever really heal from its first break?

On an unseasonably hot night in late September, Dr. Keon McGowan is called away from a family gathering to a hospital emergency. Amongst his patients that night is a blast from his past he’d rather forget. He’ll certainly never forgive butterfly hunter Darcia Davenport for leaving him alone as a single dad while she chased butterflies through the Amazon rainforest.

Coming face to face with the woman who broke his heart after all this time, Keon realises that he has never fully healed from it. But any chance of finding closure is ripped away when Darcy chooses to end treatment and live her final weeks without regret. Can Keon let her go? Or will he fight for the tomorrow they might never have?
MAYBE TOMORROW is an emotional journey of love caught between fate and destiny, and Keon is forced to choose between his head and his heart, his wants and his responsibilities, forgiving Darcy or forgetting all about her, and between a second chance family or an ill-fated heartbreak romance.

**Maybe Tomorrow is only 99 cents while on tour!**

Now to the interview (which was such a joy to be a part of by the way, Erin is lovely!)

Hi Erin, first off, congratulations on ‘Maybe Tomorrow,’ I really enjoyed it!

Thank you! I’m happy that you enjoyed Keon and Darcy’s story. And thank you for hosting me on your website today.

Can you tell us a little bit about Maybe Tomorrow?

When Darcy walked of their marriage without warning Keon McGowan would have done anything to have her back. Then, the baby he didn’t know they had was dropped on his doorstep and he vowed never to forgive her. Ten years later, twice divorced head of A&E, Keon is blindsided by Darcy’s imminent death. She has liver failure and she’s choosing not to have the transplant that will save her life. Darcy wants to die as the Monarch butterflies migrate from Mexico.

In an attempt to change her mind, Keon invites Darcy to his family’s annual weekend get together in Sherwood Forest, asking her to give their daughter Lily, memories of the mother she’s never met. But with the close proximity to Darcy, Keon soon realises that he’s still in love with her. Keon has to choose between supporting Darcy’s right to die and fighting for a second chance at happily ever after, knowing she might still die anyway.

Keon’s dealing with a lot. He’s a single parent and the head of the largest trauma centre in London. He hates the fact that his job prevents him from being a father, leaves him to rely on others to raise his daughter and he blames himself for his second wife’s alcoholism and the demise their marriage as a result. He’s eventually doing something about all of that when Darcy swans back into his life and makes him question everything he’s ever believed in, including the reason she left him in the first place.

If I could describe Maybe Tomorrow in terms of television shows, I’d have to say ABC’s Brothers and Sisters meets Grey’s Anatomy. The McGowans are a close-knit family of doctors with a lot of secrets. Its high stakes drama and just when you think you’ve figured it out, someone else throws a plot twist.

Can I ask, what inspired you to write it?

I couldn’t tell you where the inspiration came from. I woke up one morning with Keon in my head telling me he hated butterflies. The love of his life left him to chase butterflies through the Amazon rainforest and seeing butterflies reminded him of her.

Of course… their daughter is totally fascinated by butterflies, just like her mother and therefore he unable to escape from them.

There’s a lot of medical detail in the book, which I found to be very intriguing, can you tell me was there a lot of research to be done?

I had to find a condition that could kill Darcy. Something that would stop Keon’s world from turning, but Darcy could shrug off as ‘nothing’ because she’d been dealing with it for a while and has already had the time to contemplate what she wanted and didn’t want in terms of treatment choices. It also needed to be something that could be both explained by the demands Darcy’s adventurous lifestyle and masked by it.

Hepatitis B attacks the liver. It doesn’t always have symptoms, and those symptoms can be minor such as cold/flu like symptoms, and can be treated without the need for medical attention. But it also possible to manage long term with medication.

I was lucky that on Maybe Tomorrow, I had a team of editors who come from a medical background, and my sister is a medical professional. They all answered a lot of questions and provided a lot of guidance on hospital protocol.

Were there any characters you found difficult to write?

As a writer you have to put yourself into the headspace of your characters. Keon came naturally to me. He knew what he wanted from start to finish. He wanted Darcy to live. He wanted that second chance. It was always Keon’s story. But Darcy…? Not so much. She’s such a secretive complex person, with so many regrets and not one but two inflictions. She didn’t reveal very much to me at all. She was tough to crack because she had contemplated her death, now was her time to die, and all Keon had to do was let her go. They both talk about following your heart, rather than your head, and I think the moment Darcy started to fight back was the moment she started to listen to her heart rather than her head.

Can I ask when you started writing ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ did you know what the ending would be?

I always knew that Keon and Darcy’s story would come to an end in the middle of the Mexican rainforest as the Monarch butterflies migrated. One of the first scenes I wrote was a letter from Keon, explaining to ten year old Lily, why he had to leave her. Why, when he returned, he would not be the same man and he wouldn’t be able to tell her why. He hoped that one day, she would be old enough to understand, that he’d gone to be with Darcy, that he couldn’t not be there with her when she died.

Unfortunately, that letter never made it into the final version, because as both Keon and Darcy’s characters developed it became clear that Keon would never leave Lily, and Darcy would skin him alive if he did!

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing habits or share some tips with us?

Life as a writer is like a perpetual hourglass, you’re always running out of time. If you’re not making a full time income from writing then, in addition to the usual demands on your time; day job, family, housework, etc, you have to you have to spilt your ‘writing time’ between writing and marketing. That’s just the way it is!

I try to write every day. I make use of my daily commute to and from work on public transport to plug in my earphones and write on my phone. I used to do it when I walked to work but I almost got run over one too many times! I also try to make use of my breaks to get online and catch up on social media!

When it comes to writing. I’m a halt-plot-half-pantser kind of gal. I take an idea and I run with it until I’ve completed a brief outline of the story and the characters, then I email them to myself and save it in an ideas folder. I never forget a story idea this way and I now have over a hundred stories waiting to be written.

Thanks so much for talking to me today, I look forward to reading more from you in the future!

Thank you so much for opportunity to share Maybe Tomorrow with your readers!

It was a pleasure, Erin, thanks for coming over!:)

And the review …

So, starting from the very beginning I have to say the book began with a bang that I hugely appreciated! I loved how just after meeting Dr Keon McGowan, working in a very London’s busiest trauma centre, we were thrown into the deep end with Keon coming face to face with his ex-wife, Darcy, who had abandoned him and his daughter. The descriptions were brilliant, I was AT the hospital, and it was like any episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or ‘ER’ I’d ever seen with amazingly precise medical detail. As for Keon and Darcy, their meeting was very dramatic, a drama which carried on throughout the book not only with the two leads, but also with many other characters. One character that jumps to mind was his sister, Keira, who was quite over the top and so served to keep the tension going, though I found her to be unlikable.

We met not only his family, but Darcy’s too, which I really enjoyed, although at times I was a little confused, simply by the switching between characters. The romance, the banter, the chemistry, the feistiness, the tears, all kept me hooked. The pacing was great, the book absolutely flew by and I was disappointed on realizing I was nearing the end. All in all I really enjoyed ‘Maybe Tomorrow’, though as I said above it is a bit dramatic in places, so a little less easy-going than I’m used to, but definitely worth a read.

Thanks so much to the author, Erin Cawood, her publisher, Booktroupe and Chick Lit Plus for a copy of this book in return for an honest review as part of the blog tour.

Rating: 4/5

Stops on the ‘Maybe Tomorrow’ blog tour. Check them out!

MaybeTomorrowblogtour

January 25 – Jersey Girl Book Reviews – Review. Q&A & Excerpt

January 25 – Wendi Nunnery – Review

January 26 – Change the Word – Q&A

January 27 – Chick Lit Plus – Excerpt

January 28 – Queen of All She Reads – Review & Excerpt

January 29 – Authors and Readers Book Corner – Excerpt

February 1 – BR Maycock’s Book Blog – Review & Q&A

February 1 – Bookabie – Review, Q&A & Excerpt

Author Bio

erin cawood

Erin Cawood is a commercial women’s fiction author, with a taste for dramatic storylines and a passion for strong lead characters she really gets behind, cheering on right to the very end of their story. Her focus? Taking romance into the darker, edgier side of contemporary fiction.

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