Title: In Too
Deep
Author: Bea
Davenport
Publisher: Legend
Press
Publication Date: June
1, 2013
Genres: Thriller,
Suspense
Reviewed by: Margitte
Source: NetGalley
Margitte’s rating: 5/5
SUMMARY
'... The window's so small I can't see what
happens next. But what I do know is that Kim is dead. And I know this, too that
I helped to kill her. Kim, my lovely, only, best friend.'
Five years ago Maura fled life in Dowerby and took on a new identity, desperately trying to piece her life back together and escape the dark clouds that plagued her past. But then a reporter tracks her down, and persuades her to tell her story, putting her own life in danger once again.
Layer upon layer of violence and deceit make up the full picture for Maura to see and the reporter to reveal. Hidden secrets are uncovered that have been left to settle, for far too long. But in life some things can't be left unsaid, and eventually the truth will out. Whatever the consequences.
Five years ago Maura fled life in Dowerby and took on a new identity, desperately trying to piece her life back together and escape the dark clouds that plagued her past. But then a reporter tracks her down, and persuades her to tell her story, putting her own life in danger once again.
Layer upon layer of violence and deceit make up the full picture for Maura to see and the reporter to reveal. Hidden secrets are uncovered that have been left to settle, for far too long. But in life some things can't be left unsaid, and eventually the truth will out. Whatever the consequences.
REVIEW
Maura was one
of those wallflowers: colorful enough to be sometimes noticeable, but most of
the time so inconspicuous as to vanish into the bigger design of life on the
wall, unless someone made the effort to take a closer look. Someone like her narcissistic
husband, Nick.
Growing up, in school: "I (Maura) had the misfortune of being acceptable but not particular popular. I think, in a way, this is worse than being totally alone and rejected. You can see what you are let in on and what you're excluded from, what you're invited to and what was only for a more select group. You can be part only of some conversations, but listen to others without understanding them fully. You're the one left out when numbers are tight and you have no idea why. So at school I had friends, of a sort, but none that I really trusted or who trusted me, although I longed to be important enough to be taken into someone's confidence." She would experience the same in her adopted town Dowerby.
As an already married woman with a young daughter, Maura met Kim. She was her first real friend whom she could trust and who changed her outlook on life in many ways. Kim opened up a world of exciting possibilities to her, which she grabbed onto with everything she had. There was just one problem: the Dowerby town did not find comfort in the feisty, free-spirited new journalist in their midst. They did not appreciate Kim's nosy questions about town management and people's private lives, especially not those of the council members. Suddenly there was someone who did not flinch in rocking their safe little wooden boxes in which they flourished on corruption, mismanagement, greed, unfaithfulness, hypocrisy and fraud. Kim knew how to send the wood chips flying everywhere. The only box they would not allow to be shattered was the ancient-old dunking-chair of the Dowerby Fair.
"Everyday Kim said something kind, which I took home with me and thought over, and knew I was lucky." Kim would also expose the poisoned chalice in her life - one that Maura never would have identified on her own and even denied existed. She taught her daughter to become a people-pleaser like herself to safeguard herself.
But then Kim, the person who taught her to re-evaluate her own life, believes, self-image, unexpectedly died. The circumstances in which it happened, necessitated Maura to leave her daughter, as well as husband, and flee her old life to start a new life somewhere else under a different name...
For five years she got away with it, until a journalist tracked her down and forced her to confront her past and face her own truths.
Highly recommended!
Growing up, in school: "I (Maura) had the misfortune of being acceptable but not particular popular. I think, in a way, this is worse than being totally alone and rejected. You can see what you are let in on and what you're excluded from, what you're invited to and what was only for a more select group. You can be part only of some conversations, but listen to others without understanding them fully. You're the one left out when numbers are tight and you have no idea why. So at school I had friends, of a sort, but none that I really trusted or who trusted me, although I longed to be important enough to be taken into someone's confidence." She would experience the same in her adopted town Dowerby.
As an already married woman with a young daughter, Maura met Kim. She was her first real friend whom she could trust and who changed her outlook on life in many ways. Kim opened up a world of exciting possibilities to her, which she grabbed onto with everything she had. There was just one problem: the Dowerby town did not find comfort in the feisty, free-spirited new journalist in their midst. They did not appreciate Kim's nosy questions about town management and people's private lives, especially not those of the council members. Suddenly there was someone who did not flinch in rocking their safe little wooden boxes in which they flourished on corruption, mismanagement, greed, unfaithfulness, hypocrisy and fraud. Kim knew how to send the wood chips flying everywhere. The only box they would not allow to be shattered was the ancient-old dunking-chair of the Dowerby Fair.
"Everyday Kim said something kind, which I took home with me and thought over, and knew I was lucky." Kim would also expose the poisoned chalice in her life - one that Maura never would have identified on her own and even denied existed. She taught her daughter to become a people-pleaser like herself to safeguard herself.
But then Kim, the person who taught her to re-evaluate her own life, believes, self-image, unexpectedly died. The circumstances in which it happened, necessitated Maura to leave her daughter, as well as husband, and flee her old life to start a new life somewhere else under a different name...
For five years she got away with it, until a journalist tracked her down and forced her to confront her past and face her own truths.
Highly recommended!
PURCHASE LINKS
ABOUT the AUTHOR
Bea Davenport is the writing name of former
print and broadcast journalist Barbara Henderson.Her first crime/suspense
novel, In Too Deep, was a runner-up in the Luke Bitmead Bursary and is
published by Legend Press on 1st June 2013.
Bea spent many years as a newspaper reporter and latterly seventeen years as a senior broadcast journalist with the BBC in the north-east of England. She has a Creative Writing PhD from Newcastle University where she studied under the supervision of award-winning writer Jackie Kay and renowned literature expert Professor Kim Reynolds. The children's novel produced as part of the PhD, The Serpent House, was shortlisted for the 2010 Times/Chicken House Award and Bea has also won several prizes for short stories.
Originally from Tyneside, she lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed with her partner and children.
Bea spent many years as a newspaper reporter and latterly seventeen years as a senior broadcast journalist with the BBC in the north-east of England. She has a Creative Writing PhD from Newcastle University where she studied under the supervision of award-winning writer Jackie Kay and renowned literature expert Professor Kim Reynolds. The children's novel produced as part of the PhD, The Serpent House, was shortlisted for the 2010 Times/Chicken House Award and Bea has also won several prizes for short stories.
Originally from Tyneside, she lives in Berwick-upon-Tweed with her partner and children.
AUTHOR LINKS
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