A huge delight to be the latest stop on the Blog Tour for THE SPACE BETWEEN TIME by CHARLIE LAIDLAW. My thanks to the author, publisher and Anne of Random Things Tours for putting this all together and letting me be part of it all!
ABOUT THE BOOK
There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth…
Emma Maria Rossini’s perfect life begins to splinter when her celebrity father becomes more distant, and her mother dies suspiciously during a lightning storm. This death has a massive effect on Emma, but after stumbling through university, she settles into work as a journalist in Edinburgh. Her past, however, cannot be escaped. Her mental health becomes unstable. But while recovering in a mental institution, Emma begins to write a memoir to help come to terms with the unravelling of her life. She finds ultimate solace in her once-derided grandfather’s Theorem on the universe – which offers the metaphor that we are all connected, even to those we have loved and not quite lost.
Published by ACCENT PRESS
Publication Date – 20th June 2019
PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon UK £8.99
hive.co.uk £7.49
Publisher Website £8.99
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlie Laidlaw was born in Paisley and is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He has been a national newspaper journalist and worked in defence intelligence. He now runs his own marketing consultancy in East Lothian. He is married with two grown-up children.
MY REVIEW
Wow!! I wasn’t quite expecting this book to be the emotional journey that it turned out to take me on, but it was a stunning story of what happens when a seemingly perfect life starts to unravel, showing the highs and lows of family life and that the life we all probably dream of isn’t as it seems.
Emma is the star of this book – she’s the daughter of a loving but neurotic mum, a father who becomes a hugely famous actor and this story charts her life as she deals with an unconventional lifestyle, and how she learns about the world around her and how tragic events shape her life and put on her a different path to what she imagined.
The fame that her father finds turns his head so he’s rarely around for his wife and daughter, and her mother doesn’t cope well with this. He moves the family to a large mansion but they never find happiness there and their lives become defined by him and his actions.
You cannot help but become so attached to Emma as she’s confronted with such sadness in her life – she idolized her grandfather whose own life was met with ridicule for what he believed, but in him she finds a kindred spirit and often shares his beliefs and perspective on the world around them and how you should see yourself. She sees the ‘perfect’ life that her Dad portrays of his family life in the media and knowing the truth it really messes her up, and this outlook causes her to try and find a way to get his attention and to become her own person.
She finds some comfort when she becomes a writer and never plays on her famous name – she wants to write about things that matter and not the superficial celebrity world she has been witness to. She changes her name to try and become ‘herself’ but the mental issues she’s always struggled with are never far away. There is so much I think we can all relate to with this character as she finds herself in different stages of her life trying to figure out who she really is, and how much outside influences have changed her perspective and clouded her judgement.
There was so much to love about this book and the characters portrayed – it’s heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measures and is definitely going to be one of my most treasured reads of 2019!
★★★★★
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