#BlogTour Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb

 It's my turn on the BlogTour Three Words for Goodbye by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb. Three cities. Two sisters. One chance to correct the past.

About the Authors

Hazel Gaynor is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of When We Were Young & Brave, A Memory of Violets and The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Romantic Novel of the Year award. Her third novel, The Girl from The Savoy, was an Irish Times and Globe and Mail bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Popular Fiction Book of the Year. 

In 2017, she published The Cottingley Secret and Last Christmas in Paris (co-written with Heather Webb). Both novels hit bestseller lists, and Last Christmas in Paris won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award. Hazel’s novel, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter, hit the Irish Times bestseller list for five consecutive weeks. Hazel was selected by Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages and is published in twenty-one countries worldwide. She lives in Ireland with her husband and two children. Join Hazel's Book Club Newsletter Follow @HazelGaynor on Twitter, Visit hazelgaynor.com,

Heather Webb is the USA Today bestselling, award-winning author of The Next Ship Home, Rodin’s Lover, Becoming Josephine, and The Phantom’s Apprentice, as well as two novels co-written with Hazel, Last Christmas in Paris , which won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award, and Meet Me in Monaco, a finalist in the 2020 RNA Awards as well as the 2019 Digital Book World Fiction awards. 

To date, Heather’s works have been translated into fifteen languages worldwide. She is also passionate about helping writers find their voice as a professional freelance editor, speaker, and adjunct in the MFA in Writing program at Drexeul University. She lives in New England with her family and one feisty bunny. Join Heather's newsletter Follow @msheatherwebb on Twitter, Visit heatherwebbauthor.com

About the book

Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb have reunited for the third time with another unforgettable historical novel following their award-winning bestseller Meet Me in Monaco. In Three Words for Goodbye, estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers take a journey across Europe inspired by Nellie Bly, one of the first investigative journalists, who set out to circumnavigate the globe in less than eighty days. This inspired co-written novel is already earning top praise from Kristin Harmel, who said: “I loved being swept away to 1930s Paris, Venice and Vienna” while Gill Paul compares the novel to “reclining in a comfortable beach chair with warm sun on your skin and a glass of champagne at your elbow.”

New York, 1937: When estranged sisters Clara and Madeleine Sommers learn their grandmother is dying, they agree to fulfil her last wish: to travel across Europe—together. They are to deliver three letters, in which Violet will say goodbye to those she hasn’t seen since traveling to Europe forty years earlier; a journey inspired by famed reporter, Nellie Bly.

Clara, ever-dutiful, sees the trip as an inconvenient detour before her wedding to millionaire Charles Hancock, but it’s also a chance to embrace her love of art. Budding journalist Madeleine relishes the opportunity to develop her ambitions to report on the growing threat of Hitler’s Nazi party and Mussolini’s control in Italy.

Constantly at odds with each other as they explore the luxurious Queen Mary, the Orient Express, and the sights of Paris and Venice, Clara and Madeleine wonder if they can fulfil Violet’s wish, until a shocking truth about their family brings them closer together. But as they reach Vienna to deliver the final letter, old grudges threaten their reconciliation again. As political tensions rise, and Europe feels increasingly volatile, the pair are glad to head home on the Hindenburg, where fate will play its hand in the final stage of their journey.

Perfect for fans of Jennifer Robson, Beatriz Williams, and Kate Quinn, Gaynor and Webb have written a meticulously researched narrative filled with colourful scenes of Europe and a stunning sense of the period. This unstoppable historical fiction author duo will have readers enthralled as the sisters explore the luxurious Queen Mary and ride the long-haul rail to take in the sights of Paris and Venice.

Review

Violet is coming to the end of a very privileged and content life, but it is also one full of secrets. The kind of secrets that could make the wonderful family façade she has built crumble to dust. Instead Violet hopes that her granddaughters will retrace her steps and plead forgiveness in her stead.

From the exceptional majesty of a ship the Queen Mary, the mystery of the Orient Express, the history making cities on the way to the amazing feat of engineering that was the Hindenburg. Each step pulls the fighting sisters closer together, as they uncover the secrets Violet left for them to discover, and in doing so build a new relationship with each other.

Gaynor and Webb capture the beauty of the adventure and possibilities of the pre World War 2 era seen through the eyes of two young women willing to embrace each new experience. The message and words of Nellie Bly are echoed in these pages and mirrored via Clara and Madeleine.

It's a dynamic family saga, and yet also historical fiction, whilst the relationship between two sisters serves as the platform to deliver a compelling and often quite emotional story. This author duo knows how to pull readers in with characters they can relate to and moments in history that cement the story.

Buy Three Words for Goodbye at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: William Morrow; pub date 2nd September 2021 / Paperback / £8.99. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor

Today The Bird in the Bamboo Cage by Hazel Gaynor

About the Author
Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, and Irish Times, bestselling author of historical fiction, including her debut The Girl Who Came Home, for which she received the 2015 RNA Historical Novel of the Year award. The Lighthousekeeper's Daughter was shortlisted for the 2019 HWA Gold Crown award. She is published in thirteen languages and nineteen countries. Hazel is co-founder of creative writing events, The Inspiration Project, and currently lives in Ireland with her family, though originally from Yorkshire. Join Hazel's Book Club Newsletter

Follow @HazelGaynor on Twitter, @HazelGaynorBooks on Facebook, @HazelGaynor on Instagram, on Goodreads, on Amazon, Visit hazelgaynor.com, Buy The Bird in the Bamboo Cage

About the book
China, 1941. With Japan’s declaration of war on the Allies, Elspeth Kent’s future changes forever. When soldiers take control of the missionary school where she teaches, comfortable security is replaced by rationing, uncertainty and fear.

Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School. Now the enemy, separated indefinitely from anxious parents, the children must turn to their teachers – to Miss Kent and her new Girl Guide patrol especially – for help. But worse is to come when the pupils and teachers are sent to a distant internment camp. Unimaginable hardship, impossible choices and danger lie ahead.

Inspired by true events, this is the unforgettable story of the life-changing bonds formed between a young girl and her teacher, in a remote corner of a terrible war.

Review
This story is inspired by true events, one of many stories of survival during wartime. Where survival becomes a question of supporting each other in any way you can. In this case how Elspeth, Minnie and the teachers become more than just people educating the children in their care when their school ends up in the middle of wartime conflict and they are incarcerated in internment camps.

Any children away at school, boarding school, regardless of where that may be, have to adapt to being alone. Sometimes they are lucky and there are adults who function as surrogate parental figures. In the internment camp those adults, the structure they provide and the hope they keep alive - it's what helps everyone survive the horror of their experience. Simultaneously the children give strength to each other and the adults, despite the dire conditions and the fear.

Given the horrendous atrocities of the Holocaust and events taking place in Europe during WW2, other countries and areas involved in that war in particular tend to be overshadowed. The war in the Pacific and the atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation, especially in the internment camps for instance. Unlike other countries the Japanese are still unwilling to take accountability for many of their crimes before, during and after the war - Comfort women are an excellent example of that.

Gaynor is absolutely right when she writes how important it is to share the experiences, eyewitness accounts and memories of survivors and those involved in such a life-changing decade during the 20th century. As we commemorate and ask old and new generations alike to remember key events in history that changed our landscape and thought processes forever, it's equally as important to tell them the stories that are slipping into obscurity for the majority of the world.

Gaynor does an excellent job of recreating the emotional distress, which combined with the endurance of the men, women and children and the historical context results in a tender and heartfelt read.

Buy The Bird in the Bamboo Cage at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer.  Publisher: HarperCollins; pub date 20 Aug. 2020 - Hardback | £12.00. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Waterstones.