Blurb.
Clementine needs to find Lucy before it’s all too late. She also knows bringing up a child on your own down on Emerald Street where the street walkers ply their trade isn’t easy, even when your daughter’s as adorable as four-year-old Allegra. So when Peter Broadbent, wealthy, kind and possessed of the most beautiful house Clementine has ever seen, proposes, it seems almost too good to be true. It is…
What does TWG think?
I would like to say thank you to Julie Houston for inviting me to review her book, personally. The cover had me intrigued from the moment that I laid eyes on it on Twitter, and it was definitely one that kept making an appearance. I just HAD to read it.
Clementine lives on her own with her daughter Allegra, unfortunately, they don’t exactly live in a sought after area. Well, unless you’re a lady of the night that is. Clementine needed to give her daughter a roof over her head and ensure some stability was kept. But why Emerald Street? Aside from the fact everything was within walking distance, why take your child to an area where everyone looks down their noses at? Clementine gets some ‘luck’ thrown her way, and opportunity to up sticks and make a better life for herself and her daughter….with a man she can barely call an acquaintance. She’s only doing right by her daughter and keeping her safe, right? There’s got to be a catch….
I think I spent the first two chapters frowning at what I was reading! It wasn’t the fact that I didn’t like WHAT I was reading, I just kept thinking to myself ‘where does Lucy come into this? WHO is Lucy?’. Not that it would have been evident after the second chapter mind, but I’m clearly not the most patient of people!
After giving myself a stern talking to about my lack of patience, I carried on with the story. Funnily enough, things started to make an impact, and foundations were laid for a series of events that, at the time, I didn’t have a clue about (obviously). It’s amazing what happens when you’re patient eh!
It’s safe to say that I became rather sucked into the story and everything the storyline had to offer. It felt as though every single page had something on it to make me think, I kept trying to marry the ‘clues’ that I thought I had found, but they seemed to be a red herring. Either that or they weren’t clues!
I did feel sorry for Clementine throughout a lot of the book because she was trying to do her best and kept having the rug pulled from under her. Sometimes her ‘best’ came back to bite her on her junk in the trunk, but she still carried on regardless. Even though there was a lot within the book to keep my mind occupied, I felt as though the storyline was just taking a little stroll and flowing…nicely. I was waiting for something, the shock factor if you will.
But then, out of nowhere, the shock factor slapped me in the face. It was literally a case of mouth wide open, gasping, shouting at the book, and even teary! Part of me did think that maybe it came a little late in the book, but then another part of me thought that if it had come too early, there would have been nothing to hold onto. By golly did I hold on though, and I’m glad that I did because it was such an unexpected book. By that I mean certain situations snuck up on me and my reaction to the events later on in the book were also unexpected. I finished this book 16 days ago and it is STILL fresh in my mind and a book that I keep thinking about.
‘Looking for Lucy’ is such a gritty and eventful book which also set multiple scenes for various types of emotion. I underestimated my reaction to this book quite drastically, but, ‘Looking for Lucy’ is definitely a book not to be underestimated. Julie Houston is very clever in writing characters with intense depth and bringing unfortunate circumstances to ‘life’, such a great read.
Looking for Lucy by Julie Houston, published by White Glove, is available to buy right now from Amazon UK.
The Writing Garnet 