NEW RELEASE
The Judas Scar - Amanda Jennings (2014)
This has an incredibly interesting premise and follows the life of Harmony - a woman who, after reaching the age of forty and remaining childless, wants to try for a child with her husband, Will. Will isn't so keen on the idea, in fact, he refuses to get Harmony pregnant, insisting that he never wanted children and had made that clear to Harmony from the start of their marriage. At a party, Harmony gets lost in the crowd and ends up bumping into someone who could quite possibly be the perfect stranger. However, Harmony rejects the stranger's advances and goes home with her husband. It's only when attending a luncheon at a friend's house that the perfect stranger walks back into her world and throws her life into chaos. Why does Will recognise this stranger? Why does Will look so terrified and, most importantly, where do Harmony's loyalties lie? With the husband who refuses to give her the one thing she most desperately craves or with Luke, a stranger who she's only just met but feels inexplicably drawn to? If you like mystery-filled plots with tangible tension between characters then this book is absolutely for you! I was hooked from the very first page and I found it incredibly hard to put down. The pace was spot on and the plot revealed itself at exactly the right points meaning you couldn't put it down! You got to the end of a chapter and just HAD to read on to find out what would happen next. I had a very strange relationship with these characters though - I ended up feeling the largest amount of sympathy for Will and silently cheering him on. I found it really hard to relate to Harmony at times and some of her behaviour irked me which gave me a really interesting insight into the plot, one which I wouldn't have had if I had been on Harmony's side the whole time. Maybe this was deliberately done by the author, maybe not, but I have to say I enjoyed feeling in the minority with my loyalty to Will. The whole plot centred around one pivotal moment in Luke and Will's life and the way every single event afterward could be linked back to that one moment was incredibly clever but also portrayed in a totally realistic and sensitive way. The Judas Scar does touch on numerous sensitive topics - miscarriage and bullying to name a few. The one thing that let this plot down a little for me was the predictability of the climax. (LL)
