♥ The Rose Petal Beach - Dorothy Koomson ♥

Every love story has a dangerous twist.

Tamia Challey is horrified when her husband, Scott, is accused of something terrible – but when she discovers who his accuser is, everything goes into freefall. Backed into a corner and unsure what to think, Tamia is forced to choose who she instinctively believes. But this choice has dire consequences for all concerned, especially when matters take a tragic turn.

Then a stranger arrives in town to sprinkle rose petals in the sea in memory of her lost loved one. This stranger carries with her shocking truths that will change the lives of everyone she meets, and will once again force Tamia to make some devastating choices...

Dorothy Koomson has a way of weaving so many characters into each other lives, and creating an intricate network of intimacies. I picked this up on a whim recently as my book of choice for a three hour train journey with little idea what it was about. Tamia Challey answers the door one evening to the police seeking her husband, within minutes he is arrested for what she is not so sure. Frustrated beyond belief, she calls her friend asking her to come sit with the children so she can head to the police station to get some answers, so when she discovers who has accused her husband her world implodes even more than it already was.

Told primarly through the eyes of Tami, Belatrix & Mirabelle  we learn all about these women and how they know each other, the importance of their relationships and when things start to change. It took me a while to remember who was who (the mr was talking to me whilst i read) As Tami struggles to deal with the blows she has already been dealt, things become worse when her friend is declared dead - well murdered and then Tami really struggles to keep it together, when her relationship with Scott takes even more turns for the worse, im surprised the poor woman managed to keep it together.

When a woman arrives into Brighton claiming to know Mirabelle, it throws everything Tami thought she knew about her into question. Tami must decide what is true and what isnt, who is telling the truth and what really happened?

Rose petal beach is a book that manages to pack so many twists and turns into its narrative that you never really know where its going to go, the characters you thought you knew? Nope you never really did. Koomson is a wonderful story teller, that leaves you dumbfounded until the end.

4/5

   

Hello, my name's Dorothy Koomson and I'll try to make this bit that's all about me as interesting as possible.
I wrote my first novel called There's A Thin Line Between Love And Hate when I was 13. I used to write a chapter every night then pass it around to my fellow convent school pupils every morning, and they seemed to love it.

I grew up in London and then grew up again in Leeds when I went to university. I eventually returned to London to study for my masters degree and stayed put for the following years. I took up various temping jobs and eventually got my big break writing, editing and subbing for various women's magazines and national papers.

Fiction and storytelling were still a HUGE passion of mine and I continued to write short stories and novels every spare moment that I got. In 2001 I had the idea for The Cupid Effect and my career as a published novelist began. And it's been fantastic. In 2006, third novel, My Best Friend's Girl was published. It was incredibly successful - selling nearly 90,000 copies within its first few weeks on sale. Six weeks later, it was selected for the Richard & Judy Summer Reads Book Club and the book went on to sell over 500,000 copies. Oh, there I go again, this is meant to be about me, not my novels.

Okay, back to me. I recently spent two years living in Sydney Australia, and now I'm back in England. But I can't say for how long I'll be in the UK for because I've been well and truly bitten by the travel bug