Four years ago, I lied. I stood in front of the police, my friends and family, and made up a story, my best one yet. And all of them believed me.
I wasn’t surprised. Telling stories is what made me famous. Fifteen bestsellers. Millions of fans. Fame and fortune.
Now, I have one last story to write. It’ll be my best one yet, with a jaw-dropping twist that will leave them stunned and gasping for breath.
They say that sticks and stones will break your bones, but this story? It will be the one that kills me.
This book is not a romance. It is contemporary fiction, but very suspenseful in nature. It is about a famous romance author and a dark secret she keeps.
Release Date: 2nd October, 2017.
What I think?
Every once in a while, you come across a good book- a really good book. One that was well thought out, the plot carefully constructed, and the story brilliantly written.
The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre is one of those books.
I’ve seen so much about this book on GR the past couple of months- all my friends were talking about it, plus Amazon was recommending it to me left and right every time I went to the site, and literally it was topping everyone’s top reads of the year. So yesterday I was like “what the hell, I need to know what the fuss is all about!”
I have skirted around Torre’s books for a long time now, because they never really called to me you know. But I knew this much- she was a romance writer. So when I saw that this book was not romance, I was like “holy shit! Did she legit switch genres?!” And I had to read it after that! And because of that cover, because that cover is freaking gorgeous.
And reading it- I can see why people are going all gaga over it.
Helena Ross.
An International bestselling author. A mother. A widow. And a cancer patient.
When Helena gets diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at the age of 32, and is given barely three months to live, she does what anyone would do- she retires. She cancels her book deals, and pulls up from all future appointment to do the one thing she knew she had to do before she died. The one thing she thought she’d have years to do.
Tell the truth. Write that one book that matters the most.
You see, something happened 4 years ago. Something that ended with her husband dead and her daughter mercilessly snatched from her. Something she has to let the world know before it’s too late.
But writing a book isn’t easy when you’re also battling cancer. Even when you’re determined on treating it and your guaranteed death like a side-effect that is merely an annoyance.
Enter Marka Vantly.
Marka is a blond bombshell, that isn’t scared to bare it all for the sake of her sales, and has been Helena’s competitor on the top charts for a better part of the last decade. And as such there exists more than just a healthy competition between the two- they hate each other. Missing no chance at insulting one another, it comes as an entirely too big of a surprise to everyone when Helena chooses Marka to be the ghostwriter that would give her past a voice.
But all isn’t as it seems. It never fucking is. And oh the secrets those two dig out when they collide! It was absolutely brilliant, and came so out of the left field that as a reader, I couldn’t do much but read with my jaw dropped onto the floor.
Like I already mentioned, I hadn’t read Torre before, but I can’t imagine all her heroines being like this- because in the romance world, they just don’t write heroines like this.
Why?
Because Helena was difficult.
She was difficult as a person, she was difficult to deal with, and she was really damn difficult to like, and I bet she was difficult to write as well. But you know what she wasn’t difficult to do? Relate to. Watching the events unfold from her point of view, I felt such a strong kinship towards her, and I did not even know why. And I think that was point. Torre obviously doesn’t quite care if or whether we like her or not, but what she wanted (and achieved quite fantastically if I might say so myself) was for us to understand her. She wanted us to go through the grief she lived with in her present to understand the weight of her actions and her past before it was revealed.
And I have to say- I commend Torre for it. From the very first line of this book, you feel an overwhelming sense of doom that takes on a voice of it’s own, and slowly and surely lures you in, until you’re so deep that escaping is not even a choice until you’ve got all the answers. Torre teases you with all this sly stretch of words that you might miss if you read too fast, and might think as a slip of tongue if you read too carefully until right when the climax smacks you in the face and it hits you. And I thought that was so fucking clever. So very very clever. And so incredibly unique.
I have to say, I am damn impressed by her, and I’m so bloody glad I picked up this book. What a perfect way to end this year.
Once I write her story, she will be real, she will be exposed, dead to edits but open to everyone’s eyes. On their tablets, in their hands, grubby fingers and manicured nails skimming the pages faster-faster-faster until they reach The End and move on to the next. Done with that heroine. Done with that story.
About this author:
Alessandra Torre is an award-winning New York Times bestselling author of fourteen novels. Torre has been featured in such publications as Elle and Elle UK, as well as guest blogged for the Huffington Post and RT Book Reviews. She is also the Bedroom Blogger for Cosmopolitan.com. In addition to writing, Alessandra is the creator of Alessandra Torre Ink, a website, community, and online school for aspiring authors.
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