BOOKISH FRIDAY: “THE GIRL IN THE RED COAT”

Welcome to another Bookish Friday, in which I  share excerpts from books…and connect with other bloggers, who do the same.

Let’s begin the celebration by sharing Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader; and let’s showcase The Friday 56 with Freda’s Voice.

To join in, just grab a book and share the opening lines…along with any thoughts you wish to give us; then turn to page 56 and excerpt anything on the page.

Then give us the title of the book, so others can add it to their lists!

What better way to spend a Friday!

My choice today is one of my newer books:  The Girl in the Red Coat, by Kate Hamer.

 

 

 

Beginning:  I dream about Carmel often.  In my dreams, she’s always walking backwards.

The day she was born there was snow on the ground.  A silvery light arced through the window as I held her in my arms.

As she grew up I nicknamed her ‘my little hedge child.’  I couldn’t imagine her living anywhere but the countryside.  Her thick curly hair stood out like a spray of breaking glass, or a dandelion head.

(A few extra sentences, necessary to convey the thoughts).

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56:  (Carmel) I stare into the dark, being like a cat, and I start seeing some black hills.  It looks like countryside with not even a single house.  ‘I thought you lived in London,’ I say.

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Synopsis:  Newly single mom Beth has one constant, gnawing worry: that her dreamy eight-year-old daughter, Carmel, who has a tendency to wander off, will one day go missing.

And then one day, it happens: On a Saturday morning thick with fog, Beth takes Carmel to a local outdoor festival, they get separated in the crowd, and Carmel is gone.

Shattered, Beth sets herself on the grim and lonely mission to find her daughter, keeping on relentlessly even as the authorities tell her that Carmel may be gone for good.

Carmel, meanwhile, is on a strange and harrowing journey of her own—to a totally unexpected place that requires her to live by her wits, while trying desperately to keep in her head, at all times, a vision of her mother …

Alternating between Beth’s story and Carmel’s, and written in gripping prose that won’t let go, The Girl in the Red Coat—like Emma Donoghue’s Room and M. L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans—is an utterly immersive story that’s impossible to put down . . . and impossible to forget.

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What do you think?  Does this story grab you?

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