About the book:
Framed. Imprisoned. Pregnant.
Jenna thought she had the perfect life: a loving fiancé, a great job, a beautiful home. Then she finds her stepdaughter murdered; her partner missing.
And the police think she did it…
Locked up to await trial, surrounded by prisoners who’d hurt her if they knew what she’s accused of, certain someone close to her has framed her, Jenna knows what she needs to do:
Clear her name
Save her baby
Find the killer
But can she do it in time?
About the author:
Angela Clarke is an author, playwright, columnist, screenwriter and broadcaster. Her debut crime thriller Follow Me was named Amazon’s Rising Star Debut of the Month January 2016, longlisted for the Crime Writer’s Association Dagger in the Library 2016, and shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Page Turner Award 2016. Watch Me is the second instalment in the Social Media Murder Series. Angela’s memoir Confessions of a Fashionista is an Amazon Fashion Chart bestseller. Her play, The Legacy, enjoyed its first run and rave reviews at The Hope Theatre in June 2015. She hosted the current affairs show Outspoken on Radio Verulam for six months in 2014, and has appeared on the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4, BBC Three Counties and more. Her journalist contributions include: The Guardian, Independent Magazine, The Daily Mail, Cosmopolitan, and Writing magazine. In 2015 Angela was awarded the Young Stationers’ Prize for achievement and promise in writing and publishing. She volunteers with Womentoring, and the RSA Meet a Mentor scheme, and others, to help encourage and support marginalised artists into the industry. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Angela lives with her husband and far too many books.
My Review: On My Life by Angela Clarke is a psychological thriller due to be published 7 March 2019 for ebook and 11 July 2019 for paperback by Mulholland Books and I was lucky enough to receive an ARC copy from Netgalley.
This book has been doing the “social rounds” on Twitter – lots of very lucky and excited authors have been bragging about reading the proof for weeks and when it finally popped up on Netgalley and Steve Cavanagh (author extraordinaire) recommended it on THE Book Club I grabbed a copy and started reading it immediately.
I’m struggling to eloquently put into words what this book personally did to me. I could say it gripped me, kept me turning the pages, left me breathless and unable to put it down (which it did), but more importantly it was so tense and consuming that my sphincter muscles went into spasm from over clenching and I wasn’t sure whether to pop an Imodium or Ducolax as I didn’t know if I was coming or going!
When Jenna is sent to a women’s prison accused of the murder of her 14 year old step daughter and the disappearance of her fiance, she finds herself alone and fighting for her freedom, to prove her innocence and protect her unborn baby.
Without giving anything away the scenes in the women’s prison were SO F*CKING REALISTIC I crapped myself. I could literally smell the fear and hear the women’s chants and the banging of the cell doors. I was absolutely terrified for Jenna and found the scenes harrowing and very believable. The pace of the book and the alternating chapters taking the reader from past to present, ensured that I used the “just one more chapter” technique of reading.
The book is a fast paced, tense and claustrophobic, nail biter of a thriller which was, in my opinion, impossible to put down.
