It’s the night before the publication day of my novel THE VISITORS. The online reviews and mentions seem to have come thick and fast over the last few days and left me reeling a little bit! This is all new to me and I am rather overwhelmed by it all! I want to firstly say a big THANK YOU to all my family and friends who have been so supportive over the years in helping me arrive at this moment – most of all to Simon and Poppy. Also, another big THANK YOU to everyone who has featured the book recently online and for all the kind things people have been writing about it, helping it to get out there, known and read.
The latest of these is from book blog site One More Page, who just posted a very positive 4* review, their first for 2014. Here it is in full:
“I start the New Year with a review of an excellent 2014 debut that I read over Christmas. The Visitors by Rebecca Mascull is an accomplished and captivating story about Adeliza Golding, a deafblind girl born in Victorian England and her life as she grows up. From the first pages I loved Liza’s voice and was absolutely gripped by her descriptions of ‘the Time Before’ when she was unable to communicate with the outside world. Almost painful to read, Rebecca has truly put herself into the mind of a child unable to see or hear and her descriptions throughout the book are wonderful.
At age six, Liza meets Lottie, a young daughter in a family of hop pickers that work on Liza’s father’s farm each summer. As Lottie picks up Liza’s hand and begins to communicate with her, Liza’s world changes forever and from that moment the two girls are inseparable. The descriptions as Liza discovers the world and learns to communicate, are just wonderful and so detailed and evocative that I just didn’t want to stop reading.
But this book is much more than a story of a special friendship and one girl’s triumph over her disabilities; there’s romance, adventure, war and of course the mystery surrounding The Visitors, all clearly underpinned by detailed and fascinating historical research.
I felt that there were two stories in this book; the first concerning Liza’s life and the second relating to The Visitors. I thought the treatment of The Visitors was interesting and not unbelievable, even for those sceptical of the paranormal. For much of the book I couldn’t see what their role in the story would be, so the ending when it came was a nice surprise and I enjoyed the twist in the tale.
The Visitors is a rich and beautifully written historical fiction debut and would make an excellent start to your reading year.
4/5”.
So, the next time I do this blog, I imagine THE VISITORS will be out there officially, in the wide, wide world. Good luck Liza…
