Second tour of the day is for the incredible, Adele Parks, and ‘I Invited Her In’. Massive thank you to the HQStories team for the blog tour invite and the ARC. Here is my review:
I invited her in… and she took everything.’
When Mel hears from a long-lost friend in need of help, she doesn’t hesitate to invite her to stay. Mel and Abi were best friends back in the day, sharing the highs and lows of student life, until Mel’s unplanned pregnancy made her drop out of her studies.
Now, seventeen years later, Mel and Abi’s lives couldn’t be more different. Mel is happily married, having raised her son on her own before meeting her husband, Ben. Now they share gorgeous girls and have a chaotic but happy family home, with three children.
Abi, meanwhile, followed her lover to LA for a glamorous life of parties, celebrity and indulgence. Everything was perfect, until she discovered her partner had been cheating on her. Seventeen years wasted, and nothing to show for it. So what Abi needs now is a true friend to lean on, to share her grief over a glass of wine, and to have some time to heal. And what better place than Mel’s house, with her lovely kids, and supportive husband…
What does TWG think?
At the end of the day, we are all human; we see someone with a different life to our own with the chances of us turning a rather fetching shade of green is quite high. Of course we are the ones who hold the key to our destinies and such, but isn’t it only natural to feel slightly envious of different lifestyles? Notice the ‘slightly’ envious. Abi obviously didn’t get that memo!
I absolutely loved the drama that was rife in this book! I’m not usually one to plonk myself in the middle of other people’s dramas, yet I decided to sit amongst Mel and Abi’s with my legs crossed and a picnic! ‘I Invited Her In’ has friendship drama down to a fine art, whilst also encouraging readers to ponder about who they can trust in their own lives. Just because you were best friends with someone when you were the age of throwing worms at other children, does it mean that you’re automatically still their best friend years down the line? Could you still trust someone who dropped everything they knew to follow their dreams, yet come back to you with their tail between their legs and jealously stamped on their forehead?
Mel and Abi really are marmite characters; you either love them or you hate them. I won’t divulge where my opinion lie, but I have to say that these two made the storyline what it was. Yeah, maybe the whole putting women against each other was a bit too predictable, yet in a weird and roundabout way, it worked because of who they were and what their lives entailed.
I think Adele Parks has written her best book with ‘I Invited Her In’, as the suspense, twisty, rollercoaster ride of a storyline ticked a lot of my boxes and kept me holding onto the book for dear life.
A gripping, addictive, and incredibly realistic and relatable novel which will leave you questioning all of your friendships both past AND present!
The Writing Garnet 