Tuesday, 15 October 2024

#Blogtour The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins

It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins.

About the Author

Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for fifteen years before writing her first novel. Born and brought up in Zimbabwe, she moved to London in 1989. Her first thriller, The Girl on the Train, has sold more than 23 million copies worldwide. Published in over fifty languages, it has been a No.1 bestseller around the world and was a box-office-hit film starring Emily Blunt. Paula’s thrillers Into the Water and A Slow Fire Burning were also instant No.1 bestsellers.

About the book

When a small bone at the centre of a famous sculpture is revealed to be human, three people become intimately connected by the secrets and lies that put it there.

Set on a Scottish tidal island connected to the mainland for just a few hours each day, and home to only one inhabitant, The Blue Hour asks questions of ambition, power, art and perception.

Paula Hawkin’s singular fourth thriller cements her place among the very best of our most nuanced, powerful and stylish storytellers.


Review

Was it just me? The last page - especially the last small paragraph - reads like an epitaph. It resonates hard, perhaps more so after such an introspective and often menacing read.

If this gets made into a visual experience I hope they get the scenery right. In the story the island - let's just call it that - it becomes a  character in its own right. The place that offers isolation, solitude, safety, threat and danger - all in equal measure. A metaphor for self, for the engagement with relationships, and for life.

It's a bit of a broken web story, and at the end I'm not sure the web is restored in its entirety, but I think that might just be the point. Life doesn't always give us a resolution to the threads we encounter. We make choices, judgements, decisions that alter the paths we take.

Thrown into the mixture of this psychological thriller, is the way art is perceived and created. The relationship between integrity, ethics, morals and creativity. Becker is a prime example of integrity of artwork over possible crime, obsession melds with professional interest.

As the layers are unpacked from a variety of directions the reader is taken on a journey of fear vs inspiration, menace vs a search for peace. Hawkins always delivers a fascinating read.

Buy The Blue Hour at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher Doubleday, pub date 10th October 2024 | Hardback | £22.00. Buy at Amazon com.

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