About Beth Morrey: Beth Morrey is currently the Creative Director at RDF Television where she has been involved in numerous productions – she helped create The Secret Life of Four Year Olds series on Channel 4 and devised 100 Year Old Drivers for ITV.
She was shortlisted for the Grazia-Orange First Chapter competition back in 2011, had her work published in the Cambridge and Oxford May Anthologies, and was Vice-President of the Cambridge Footlights. Beth lives in London with her husband, two sons and dog.
Follow @BethMorrey on Twitter, on Goodreads, on Amazon, Buy Saving Missy
Prickly. Stubborn. Terribly lonely. But everyone deserves a second chance… Missy Carmichael’s life has become small. Grieving for a family she has lost or lost touch with, she’s haunted by the echoes of her footsteps in her empty home; the sound of the radio in the dark; the ticktick-tick of the watching clock.
Spiky and defensive, Missy knows that her loneliness is all her own fault. She deserves no more than this; not after what she’s done. But a chance encounter in the park with two very different women opens the door to something different. A new life beckons for Missy, if only she can be brave enough to grasp the opportunity. But seventy-nine is too late for a second chance. Isn’t it?
Review
It's incredibly sad. I dread to think how many people like Missy are out there right now. Isolated, lonely and afraid to reach out because they think they are a burden. There is also an element of pride and shame to contend with. It's difficult to be perceived as vulnerable and in need of help, friendship or any kind of attention.
Missy is buried deep inside her personal grief and heavy layers of loneliness. Sometimes she is willing to admit to herself how much she would rather be enveloped in the fold of a loving family, especially when she sees echoes of her life and loved ones in strangers. She yearns for the contact, the conversation and the small moments, and yet she is also the one keeping herself from reaching out to establish contact with others. It's hard, it's excruciatingly painful to envisage such emotional turmoil. Such a leaden weight of sadness. Just wandering slowly towards the end, right?
I found it lacked depth at times, especially the characters, and seemed a little disjointed and confused. There was no defining centre or pull, but rather a meandering of sorts. Then again perhaps that was the intention - to highlight the fact Missy could be one of many elderly people who go unnoticed in the steadily moving bustle around them. The invisible among us. The overall gist and plot are definitely a storyline plenty of readers will be able to relate to.
The author shines a light on this element of growing older in a so-called forward thinking society and also how we tend to be so busy with ourselves that wondering about the plight of others has become a forgotten courtesy. When you take Missy's story out of the general plot then that is what remains, and of course that perhaps, as in this case, some of us will remember what it means to support and give a little.
Buy Saving Missy at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Harper Collins; pub date 6th February 2020 | Hardback £12.99 | Ebook | Audio. Buy at Amazon com. Hive. Bookshop org. Waterstones.
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